I know how to pick the best watermelon. Don’t ask me how; my memory isn’t great and I’m not good with words. We used to buy one watermelon a day in the summertime. My dad would spoon it from his half directly, while my mom took an ice cream scoop and prepared watermelon balls to snack on with the other half. She would place them carefully into stacked plastic tupperware and pour the juice over the top like sauce on a fish.
Whenever I’m on the hunt for a watermelon, I find myself bringing my ears close to watermelon piles and rolling up my fingers to knuckle tap as many of them as I can. I love to discern their potential sweetness, and to have my intuition be proven correct.
A hollow resonance indicates juiciness. And an oblong shape indicates the time it has taken to ripen. Hold the watermelon, because a watermelon grows too heavy when it is overdue. Those watermelons sound flat when you smack them with your palm; their insides whiten as their juice dissipates. The perfect watermelon still feels alive. It is preserved in the state where it vibrates when touched, and its insides are bright red. Each bite is half liquid, half solid. Too soggy, crumbling red, and it’s no good either.
On May 8th, I went on a quest for the best watermelon in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown. On May 11th, I shared sounds from my quest with friends who are good at listening — musicians, poets, a psychiatrist-in-training. Oles Chepesiuk, Yoyo Comay-Newman, Manar Moursi, Fan Wu, and Justine Yan helped me translate sound into language, resulting in the composition I-IV (red) throughout this issue. To listen to the original audio.
I.
hush hush
the concrete’s breathing
the fabric is grey,
shiny and damp.
metal whirs, throats giggle
with copper sound.
“slow down a little bit.”
somnambulant, buzzing, sibilant
snapping, ignition
anticipatory sizzle,
oblong bubbles of speech
the trip is already—outrage
the way bugs bounce
against screen door
a murmur like a bedrock
that disrupts and vibrates
in my intestines
wind-drone bi-arterial
hot vaunted revving
screech or skids to a stop
the nearness textures fritter
(thump of an unspent fricative) pitter-patter to the hollow
four-to-the-floor
water slapping
against a shore, woodpecker.
let me in! let me in!
II.
monkeyspanked with the
palm of the eye
of the mind, a descanted
third furls out
tuned to a neolib intervallo
five, five, five fingers
increasingly insistent,
more bone, more knuckle
now the palm, the lines in that palm spreading outward
to an edge, a blade of hand
a private moment, obstinate against the air
III.
blue cage choir
steel to stutter
the squeezed nozzle releases
skirt-high demoiselles
fruited up like Hong Kong neon
a stereo reminds you of more
exciting times
that were also significantly sick,
though promising.
what’s wrong with you? how could
you say that to me?
a song
my Chinatown mall
parakeets metal with the music.
sweet flutes, pipes, blow.
cash comes clunking in.
returning and still green as if the city were closed in on itself
and bursting in packets
finding in itself again the dull roar of expectation
thuddering inquisitions
steps accumulate to nowhere,
on this crowded sidewalk stand
imagine the insides
strewn in the gutter.
people are mad, just in a normal way.
IV.
clinical inquiries into pitch,
auscultating the sweetness of love,
thinking of love, and mealiness of the heart.
i have enough knuckles to bear it.
that one’s a good one.
oh, that one is better.
here sweetness sweetness,
here sweet sweet.
clack clack, clog clog, kang kang,
marimba. skin skin skin.
what is skin and what is rind.
shhhhh says the camera.
quiet while i see.
(is there quiet?)
oh sweet, styrofoam when i get you home. fabric. paper, plastic, tape, tear, rips, slurp, chomp, chaw, loot, loot it of its insides, slick chaw, jawing up in the night, but sun is dripping.
quench quench quench.
halve, and halve, and halve, and snap and digestion follows no geometry, is not a decision to make.
fingers spread or fingers clenched?
grandma drank the juice like soup from her bowl.