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  • Apple Slices
  • Todd Boss (bio)

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“Apple Orchard,” glass negative, ca. 1920, Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress.

Apple Slices    —eaten rightoff the jackknife inmoons, half moons,quarter moons andcrescents—        stillsummon commonsummer afternoonsI spent as my dad’sjobsite grunt, framingfuture neighbors’houses out of 2×4sand 4×6s, [End Page 103]     and ourbrief and silent pick-up tailgate lunch-box lunch breaksof link sausage,longhorn cheddar,larder pickles, coldleftover roast-beef-and-butter sandwicheswrapped in paper,a couple of pippinsfrom the Fall CrickPick-n-Save, and—flavored of tin fromthe lip of the cupof a dented thermospassed between us—a hard-earned shareof still-chill wellwater …    Nowso many waned andwaxed moons later,another well-paid,well-fed, college-bred paper-pusher, Iwonder that I’ve neverlabored harder, noreaten better.

Todd Boss

Todd Boss’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the New Yorker, Best American Poetry, the London Times, and on NPR. In 2009, Virginia Quarterly Review named his debut collection Yellowrocket one of the ten best poetry books of the year and awarded him the Emily Clark Balch Prize. Todd is the founding co-director of Motionpoems, a poetry film initiative now collaborating with major American publishers. His newest collection of poems is Pitch, published by W. W. Norton & Company.

Editor’s Note: “Apple Slices” originally appeared in the collection Pitch (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012) and is reprinted here with permission of the author. [End Page 104]

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