Day 24: Watermelon fun

• Manja Maksimovič

This post is all about watermelons and not watermelons. And fun. Enjoy!

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Prompt 24: “Today’s prompt is a fairly simple one: to write about a particular fruit – your choice. But I’d like you to describe this fruit as closely as possible.”

I admit, I’m a bit poem-tired and tired in general. This is my second post today as I celebrated my friend’s birthday earlier. She is there and I’m here and it doesn’t seem anything will change soon.

I’m not tired of poems as such but of wrangling poems and other prompts into coherent wholes. Today I must leave Friendly Friday prompt until tomorrow and hope the prompt will fit it. Or I’ll make it fit. There is still Sunday but on Sundays there is Pic and a Word challenge… Or I can switch them around. See? Work!

And this post? This post is all about the watermelons.

Watermelon fun

Hey soldier, put down your gun,
let’s have some watermelon fun.
—Jelena Petošević

Oh, the things I could tell you about watermelons,
those giant juicy balls of
melon fire
and fire water.
How various Slavic languages call it
lubenica.
How bad it would hurt
to get one dropped on the head.
Coconut? Pah!
How it tastes,
exactly like the burp it gives,
almost like cucumber
which I hate.
How my grandma
would buy one of 8, 9 or 10 kilos
at the market,
walked home
and dragged it up
to the fourth floor
without a lift.
Talking about watermelon fun.
How I used to spit
but now I swallow.
How they grow haphazardly in the fields,
which I’ve only seen here in Italy.
Slovenia is too cold for them
even though I grew a couple
in my own garden
from a previous poem.
They were tiny like a fist
and greenish
and fully inedible.
How it feels when you eat too deeply
and reach the pale part.
How it drips.
All that.
But I won’t.

Here is a song instead, by the Serbian songstress Jelena mentioned above. Enjoy. And before you complain: the watermelons in the video were eaten by goats who carried the seeds to places where no watermelon had ever grown before. But after? It did.

Here is some fruit a quick search through my archives yielded. I could have sworn I didn’t have any watermelon.

  • Not watermelon. Pumpkin, with Piran in the background on the wall in Ljubljana.
  • Not watermelon. Grapes in the garden of my parents in Piran. (There is kiwi too. Not in this photo.)
  • Not watermelon. Cherries in the garden of my uncle in Ljubljana.
  • Not watermelon. Some kind of tiny apples in the Ljubljana Botanical Gardens.
  • Not watermelon. Oranges in Rome.
  • Not watermelon. Peaches in the streets of Rome.
  • Not watermelon. Pomegranate on the cover and in the flesh from this Roman garden to the table.
  • Watermelon!! I couldn’t believe it! Count on my friend to bring it to the PicniConcert at the Ljubljana Castle a couple of years ago. I brought beer.

For Day 24 of NaPoWriMo 2020

27 thoughts on “Day 24: Watermelon fun”

  3. I enjoyed this. I love watermelon. When I was young I saved seeds from a watermelon, the next year planted them and ended up with some nice specimens of which one weighed 25 pounds. The vines went all over the yard. You brought back nice memories and I enjoyed also how you wrote this post, building up the story with all the fruits until… watermelon!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. My watermelon, the whopper one, I mean, was a total success. Juicy and beautiful. I have photos of me eating watermelon at a family reunion when I was very small, maybe 3, so it would be about 1961 or 1962. According to what my parents said I was unstoppable after the first taste and ate several slices, much more than a little kid like me would have been expected to, and got some attention for the feat. I do remember how much I loved watermelon as a kid and still do.

        Liked by 1 person

  6. Your photos are mouth-watering!

    And this!
    “melon fire
    and fire water.”

    And this!
    “How it tastes,
    exactly like the burp it gives,”

    And there may have been one other line that made me spit out my drink… 😉

    Loved this one. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Love the poem. I also enjoy the honesty of this whole post. Totally understand about being poem tired and having to meet various prompts. I felt like that during NaPoWriMo this year but you find a way to pull a poem out of somewhere. Ljubljana’s lovely, I’ve worked there a couple of times teaching. Punishingly hot in summer though🔥☀️

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Ah, thank you, Sunra. I like honesty. Ahh, you taught in my city? Did you teach English? Kids or adults? Just curious, no need to reply if you prefer not say. 🙂 If you think that is hot, do not come to Italy in the summer. I escape to Slovenia when the heat starts. This year the heat is late.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Yes, I did, about 4 times during 2013 and 2018 in different cities including Ljubljana. I taught both adults and kids. They were only short contracts of a few weeks but the students were lovely and I had a great time. Slovenia’s a lovely wholesome country.

        I have been in Italy in the summer a few times, for work and leisure! I just suffered the heat! 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

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