TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Every September for as long as I can remember, I’ve gone apple picking with my family at Lynd’s Fruit Farm in Pataskala, Ohio.

The tradition started with my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins when I was a small child. When my sisters and I had children of our own, we continued our annual apple-picking outing with about fourteen of us. Every year, we take a family photo of my parents and all of the grandkids in a comically giant red Adirondack chair — the kind designed especially for novelty photos.

I have fond memories of eating apples straight from the tree after shining them on my t-shirt. I remember climbing the small trees when I too was small and then letting my kids climb when they were little. They’d pick the largest apples and hand them down to our waiting bushel sacks one by one.

Now, only a few of the kids are still small enough to climb. But the crisp sweetness of an apple plucked right from the tree is something I’ll never outgrow — and … it’s poetry. It links our individual experience directly to the environment. It connects the beauty in our perception to a universal narrative. Apples are front and center in some of our best-known stories, parables of knowledge and truth. Fruit itself is a reminder of the land, trees, bush, and vine that grew it. Of how the earth works so hard to make life, and to make life that is sweet.

Today’s poem takes as its inspiration the grapefruit, which is fleshy and juicy and as bitter as it is sweet. I was drawn to this poem because it is so packed with sensory detail: smells, sights, and textures. The poem itself is delicious.

Citrus Paradisi
by Arah Ko

In Chicago, the sunny kitchen smelled like grapefruit, wood dust, wool coats. The
windy, wide paved streets felt empty, even when they were full. The oro blanco
grapefruit tasted richest in the coldest months, separated into perfect, jewel-toned
triangles. Did you know some people on depression medication can’t eat grapefruit?
Not even the LaCroix flavor. Not even ruby reds, head-sized grapefruits that glisten
at Trader Joe’s, only 30 cents above my budget! Juicy, smelling like morning, smelling
like the January I almost killed myself, but didn’t. We split them in halves—sour, and
sometimes so, so sweet—redblush grapefruit in blue china bowls, we ate them on
the icy roof with toothy steel spoons. They say there are as many kinds of friendship
as fruit, or cars, like your old truck, its rumble rumble over road salt, crisp ice, back
from the grocery store, the compostable green baggy bursting open and out rolled
grapefruit! So many huge, fleshy pink grapefruits; when they toppled to the ground,
they bounced. I ate one this morning, thumbs dug deeply in thick skin, glad to be
alive, and every time I eat one, I think of you.

“Citrus Paradisi” by Arah Ko from BRINE ORCHID © 2025 Arah Ko. Used by permission of the poet.