Inspired by an interview with Mr. Joseph McDonough, part of the Our Streets Our Stories collection, archived in the Center for Brooklyn History

I show the seller at the produce stand

the inside of my bloated tote

he counts a box of blueberries,

five bananas, two apples,

a head of broccoli, quotes me a price:

“nine dollars fifty.” I hand him a ten

and try to walk away

but he stops me with a pear

raised above his head

high into the blue sky

an almost-yellow green

fat-bellied fruit

brown stem atop its head

“Take this.”

The pear enters my bag

journeys back with me

when I empty it I remember

my mother saying:

“Your father always carried

a pear in his pocket.”

Every evening I write to my dead father,

sometimes a question,

sometimes a memory,

sometimes something I never got to tell him.

I write to him in my mother tongue,

which was not the language he spoke

but the language I spoke when he was around.

Perhaps it is strange to write to a spirit

in a language that he didn’t speak

but what language does a spirit speak?

ダディーはいつもポケットに梨が入ってたって聞いたよ。

梨はまあるくないね。

Translation:

I heard there was always a pear in your pocket.

Pears are not circular, are they.

Pears are too fragile to harvest

with automated machines.

Every single pear in the United States

is hand-picked.

The fruit is too delicate for metal

and trucks and assembly lines.

I wonder if the seller at the fruit stand knows

I am fatherless.

I catch him watching me

as I walk past his stand into the mouth

of the subway station

like a neighbor or family making sure

I am alive, fed, filled with fruit.

I wonder if he knows

that I long for my father’s pocket pear.

My father’s name was Samuel,

which means “God has heard.”

The other day I sent my mother a photo

of my father and me.

He is sitting and I am standing

between his legs an arm

gently propped on his thigh

staring into the camera

while he gazes down at the top

of my head and my mother responded:

おお、いい写真だね。

ベーちゃん、まだ一歳前だね。

サミエルさん、神様のように守ってるね。

Translation:

Oh, what a nice photo.

You aren’t even one yet here.

Samuel is protecting you like God.

I notice how my mother calls him Samuel

even though by the time he met her

he went by his middle name, Jason.

Jason means “healer.”

I take the pear that was gifted to me

and place it on the altar

I’ve set up in my living room.

The fruit next to a small teacup of water

next to a golden framed photo

of my grandparents on their wedding day

next to the smiling face

of my father encased in silver.

“Here, a pear for your pocket,” I say

chuckling to myself about a ghost

with pockets.

When my father and his family

finally moved to Canarsie

by way of Russia, Germany, Cuba,

and a cramped apartment near Central Park,

nomads for almost a decade

after escaping Poland

he noticed outside his window

a dwarf peach tree.

Decorated with layers

of green tarp leaves

the tree was short

but rooted firmly

gripping ground

dropping every year

peaches as big

as grapefruits.

Peaches, like pears,

are fragile, delicate,

and bruise easily.

My father, like pears,

was fragile, delicate,

and bruised easily.

He reached for fruit,

but they stopped him

told him to stay away

from the spheres

filled with sweet

they were not his

to keep.

I take the pear down from the altar

after a short prayer and carry it

to the kitchen. I slice it open,

the knife wetting with its juice.

I cut it up into thin pieces

pop one in my mouth,

the buttery fruit spreading sweet and tart

all over my tongue.

ありがとう, I say.

美味しいよ。

I chew and I swallow and I imagine

my father tasting nectar next to me.

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