Poet of the Month: “Salad Days” by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

Alongside that beauty mark there was a shiver of mustache
and he takes his pants off fast, with the quick tug and grunt of his major 

league days. “Yes,” the expo whispered, “Pablo played.” A big swinger, 
but neat and swift of limb, now he bunts out chickpeas

and green stuff for cold cuts: 

with clean gloved fingers he renders into Caesar
a cos one could hardly call romaine.

I counted shifts ’til I was with him, tasting turf. I tasted 
a field dressed in rain. I made the wrong

change every hour before staff meal, when Pablo would mingle 

cherries with endive, O! heaven-
ly salad. It trembled 

on the plate. I hardly made it to the table, I wore my apron tied in straits—

Pablo could pit
a stone from its cherry with just his thumb and fingers. 

But those kitchen guys, they all have waitresses from other 
restaurants, other wives waiting

for a salad with endive.

Evangeline Riddiford Graham is an artist and writer from Aotearoa. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks La belle dame avec les mains vertes (Compound Press, 2019), and Ginesthoi (hard press, 2017). She is in the second year of the New School Creative Writing MFA and lives in Queens.