A Bowl of Red Fruit, by Robin Michel

Automat, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1927

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A Bowl of Red Fruit 
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She wears a gold bell-shaped hat, a cloche. 
It partially covers her face, but not enough. 
Her right hand is bare, pauses midair, holding cup 
as if forgetting to drink. Her left hand gloved. 
It rests on a marble table top the color of a robin’s egg. 
Eggs. Her stomach grows queasy, only tolerates saltines.
Before her, the empty plate. What to do? What to do? 
Her shame hides under rouged cheeks. 
Beneath the table, her legs are crossed. Stilled. 
She hears her father’s voice: Must you 
practice dance steps beneath the dinner table?
En cloche is a ballet term. The dancer swings her leg
back and forth like the clapper of the bell. 
The dancer’s head and torso the bell’s handle. 
Tondu en cloche Jette en cloche she would swing her leg 
front to back, back to front, upper body perfectly still 
except for lifting food to mouth. A habit becoming a tic. 
Involuntary. Automatic. 
She is cold. Frozen. Will she ever thaw? 
Her table by a drafty door. The radiator useless. 
Once her family visited the Liberty Bell.
Returned home to find their radiator cracked.  
Water freezes, expands, her father explained. 
The same thing is happening inside her body now.
How long will her new coat fit? 
Your eyes are like emeralds, he said. She traced
the pattern onto the emerald velvet, cut the fabric, 
and stitched the pieces together on her mother’s 
treadle sewing machine. She attached the black fur 
collar and cuffs by hand.  When people said 
she looked like Clara Bow, she puffed with pride. 
A beautiful woman, he said, can have anything she desires.
What a lie! How giddy and naïve she was, imagining 
some sparkly future. Overhead, the gold lights 
cast shadows. Behind her, a bowl of red fruit 
resting on a counter below a large window overlooking 
the black void. Taste the forbidden, he whispered.

Robin Michel
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Robin Michel is the author of the full-length poetry collection Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press 2023) and is the winner of the  Jessie Bryce Niles Poetry Chapbook Contest for Things Will be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review 2024). Her poetry appears in many print and online journals, including Unbroken Journal, Gordon Square Review, and Passionfruit Poetry. Robin served as a fine arts program coordinator and / or docent in public schools for over fourteen years.