A sign at the Asian grocery:
White Coconuts $2.95.
As if to reassure you
buy the sweet white flesh
there, intact
beneath the green exocarp,
the dense middle, the hard
woody layer
enclosing the seed—
In that scene from Minari,
there are no actual coconuts
where Jacob persuades the greengrocer
to buy produce from him.
There are most likely packets
of dry noodles, bottles of gochujang
sauce, barley tea, foil-wrapped
snacks. Bok choy
and daikon.
Back on the farm
grandmother walking
sets the shed on fire.
There is no rind or layer
to the hungry flames that lick
at all the fruit stacked
lovingly in crates.
In the morning,
white ashes on the ground
under which the water,
so difficult to woo in this land,
winds its selfish way.
A coconut, and all drupes, have three layers: the exocarp (outer layer), the mesocarp (fleshy middle layer), and the endocarp (hard, woody layer that surrounds the seed).
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.