An act of Violence

A fruit vendor on Clinton begins selling only peaches.
I pass him in the mornings, on my way to the train.
Each day he smiles and yells from his silver cart:
"Sweet peaches!"
and I smile back.

Most pedestrians keep on; nobody here wants peaches.
Some will pause from time to time, bewildered by the uninterrupted mirage
of pink fruit:
"No apples?" a woman in a purple skirt-suit might say.
"Just peaches!" the vendor will exclaim, shaking his pudgy cheeks.

"There is no market here for you,"
I stop to say to him, on a Tuesday.
He cocks his head.
"If only you had grapes!" I say.
The vendor humphs:

"Just peaches! Always succulent, very sweet!"
He holds up a peach in his fist, and shakes it at my nose.
"No thanks," I say.

Time makes the vendor nervous.
"Once they only wanted peaches,"
the vendor stops me in the rain.
He grasps me by the wrist, so sudden, that a few droplets of coffee
spill from the paper cup I am holding.
"They left my poor bananas to rot!" he says.
I press my lips together tightly.
The vendor's trembling is frantic.
There are beads of sweat and precipitation clinging to his bristly mustache.

"I will take a peach today," I say,
loosening his hand from my wrist,
fishing through my pocket for
a warm nickel and dime.

The vendor scuttles to his cart,
collects three fleshy mounds between the fingers of his one hand
and stuffs them into my purse.