The Alley

 

My dad scraped carrots with an old thick knife,

the blade heavy, the shaft crackled and rough.

He loved carrots, being the son of a horse trader.

I see him, a boy of ten, sharing a carrot with a bay mare.

We didn’t have a peeler. Neither of my parents

needed one, my mom scraping carrots for chicken soup,

my father for a Sunday afternoon snack. He’d hand me

one with a soft, shy smile, just like my grandma’s

when she passed around a a jar of honey

filled with taglach, strips of dough rolled into small baked nuggets.

I chew my carrot, fuzzy from its scraping, and sit on our apartment’s

back porch where I watch the alley, the cars passing through

between rows of trash cans, cats sitting on closed lids.