Fayth Tan

Jadu’i watermelons are not afraid of the unforgiving heat. The sweet melon was once a prized export famed throughout Palestine, finding its way to markets in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. This fall, the watermelons will find themselves in Los Angeles. In five community gardens throughout the city, a handful of Jadu’i watermelon seedlings are unfurling tiny shoots and taking root. They might seem out of place being so far from home, but they have an important job to do: survive, grow, and fruit.

“Anything so radical & ordinary stands for something.” — Brenda Hillman, from Metaphor and Simile24 poems at years’ end The growth forms of lichen are a kind of poetry: the filmy, powdery skin of the leprose variety clings to bark, the viscous mass of gelatinous lichen congeals on rock, the gossamer fingers of the byssoid grasping outward. Just as poetry enthralls the senses, lichens practically beg for visceral contact.

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