Canned Artichoke Hearts
At the age of fifteen
your father took you home
to the five acres
and light blue aluminum
barn. In the kitchen
he opened the cabinet
old, cold toned
wood, and grabbed the cans
wrapped in unsaturated green
and yellow labels. Carrots
and green beans. Corn and
over-sized yam cans.
There’s no way to know
what’s in the ones that have
lost their labels. They’ve
lived long in that cabinet. His
mother’s cabinet
of expired things.
One by one, he puts them
on the formica.
Tin clacking
on contact. Looking
at the expiration dates stamped
on their lids,
he laughed
and said ‘some of these
are older than you.’
1994, 1998
‘What year were you
born in again?’
You remain seated on
the stool. You tell him
the date. He nods, pretending
to remember a newborn
in a hospital room.
‘Wow!
it’s really been that long, huh?’
He almost sounds
impressed with himself.
Catie McGuire is an English major and is currently a junior at SUNY Geneseo. She originally hails from New Jersey and her preferred genre is poetry.