the hunched mexican, on his way to bench more of his produce outside his store, lost his grip on this box of california pomegranates. two purplishly red rined fruits eagerly popped out of the box and bruised their way to the gutter. cursing, the tottering grocer dove after the leaping fruits the way an eager-to-impress, basketball camp teener would after an out-of-bound ball.
still cursing, he got up, dusted the fruits and himself. one of the two he tossed back into the box which he eventually slammed down beside this doddering tower of empty boxes shoehorned on top of each other like sad, unpainted babushka dolls. the other, he started on munching. he spat the seeds with a violence, almost in defiance, at the severe street.
done with the fruit, he started stringing up sallow cavendish bananas from the sagging, striped blue awnings. they drooped like wilted, day-old fiesta buntings.
