Portside

Capitalism

By Elaine Fowler Palencia

Along the two-lane blacktops

of my childhood we stopped

to buy watermelons.

Mother thumped them,

listening for that deep, ripe sound.

If she hesitated, the farmer

would take out his clasp knife,

cut a square plug for tasting,

offer it on the point of his knife.

She always bought the melon

he’d spoiled for us.

Later, a high school friend

who sold Bibles door-to-door

for spending money, said

he was sent out with these instructions:

“Don’t show them an unwrapped Bible.

Hold up one wrapped in cellophane

and then rip that off.

It obligates them to buy.

They feel like they have no choice.

This works especially well

with the poor.”

Elaine Fowler Palencia, Champaign IL, grew up in eastern Kentucky. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks. The most recent is How to Prepare Escargots (Main Street Rag Press), a collection about writers and writing. She also has published six books of fiction, including two Appalachian short story collections, and a nonfiction work, On Rising Ground (Mercer University Press), constructed around thirty letters from her great-great grandfather’s Civil War service. Her work has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the longtime moderator of the Red Herring Fiction Workshop and a member of the Champaign County Mental Health Board.