Cafeteria Décor, by Alexandra Burack

Still Life with Apples and Pears, by Paul Cézanne (France) 1892

​ Cafeteria Décor                    
  
Neon-green, to me, that pear in Still Life, whose copy hangs 
   shellacked in a shadow-box behind the college snack-bar. And not 
 
representative of food; otherwise, Manfred, willow-wept over 
   a janitor’s pail, could grasp through glass, reanimate the pulp and pluck 
 
the fruit for belly’s sake. Uncaged, auric-ripe pears would find
   their bellowed shape in his root-stocked hands that drudge, third-class 
 
steerage away from the bosc jasmine nose-pinch of his grandfather’s 
   allotment in Wein. May fast-food palace illustrated menus, illuminated 
 
manuscripts of tacos with capitalized CHEESE, centuries 
   of still-lifes of bowled European fruit, manifest as edible in his mouth. I want 
 
him loosed from cleaning closets unbent, released 
   from the chronic gut-clench of scanty meals, secure from collapse down 
 
the dumpster-side to backlot crabgrass, Comice, Passe Crassane, D’Anjou,   
   Tosca, and Forelle early ripening in autumn pockets of his overalls.

Alexandra Burack

Alexandra Burack, author of the chapbook, On the Verge, has published ekphrastic and other poems recently in Metphrastics, ucity review, The Sewanee Review, and Bulb Culture Collective, among other venues. She is the founder of Ekphrastica, a creative writing pedagogy for poets/writers and visual/performing artists, and enjoyed a 45-year career as a college creative writing professor. She serves as a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions, and a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review, The Adroit Journal, and $ Poetry is Currency. She currently works as a freelance editor, writing coach, and tutor. Her website is: https://www.alexandraburack.com.