For your enjoyment “The Apples of Recollection” by Morri Creech
The Apples of Recollection
by Morri Creech
Once, stumbling into the twilight kitchen, drowsy, leaning above
the ripe fruit on the countertop, hearing only a moth thump
against the fluorescent light and a slight breeze swell the curtains,
I had a vision. There was a long path to the apple trees
my grandfather grafted when he was young. They shed their leaves
in the cold light. I walked there and found my father, twenty-six,
bent on a ladder, hoisting a half-full bucket toward the boughs.
The sunlight fell in columns through the biggest branches.
I knew somehow that my mother had been gone five months,
and still he picked apples for the pies she would never make.
One fell groundward and rolled toward my feet. I was sure
that if I picked it up, if I lifted it to my mouth and took a bite,
I would remember nothing of what I saw. And for a time,
there was nothing else, just that moment, a father busy at work
among the trees, picking the swollen apples no one would eat,
and his child beneath him, holding the one piece of fruit
he was strictly forbidden, for memory’s sake, to taste. All of this,
I knew, might pass through the gates of ivory in an instant.
And then I woke. I stood there alone in the fluorescent light
of the present, in the kitchen, holding the unbitten apple in my palm.
—
Indiana Review rocks. They’re one of the few magazines that actively keep an eye 
on their subscription list, and updated my address! What a wonderful surprise to get the newest IR in my mailbox. I’d been wrapped up in the Ultra-Talk issue of TriQuarterly, so definitely a slight change of pace, and perhaps it has something to do with the juxtaposition of the two journals over the holiday break, or maybe because I have a soft spot in my heart for a poem of my own, about a vision of my father and a piece of fruit. So, universality or coincidence? The Indiana Review liked it enough to print it, I was drawn back to this poem a number of poems while flipping haphazardly through the journal, so, anyone? What do ya think? You can’t deny that “Twilight Kitchen” and “in the fluorescent light of the present” sound sweet. Yes, they produce saccharin synesthesia. Anyway, subscribe to the Indiana Review. This issue’s cover looks very nice too, and they don’t have it online yet, so tah-dah. Here we go.