Joshua Gray
How I learned to CookAfter every soccer practice, I always followed my feet through the front door and into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of orange juice. Maybe two. My own stench and filth knew how to move me into the shower, so I’d stand under steam
and watch dirty water teem from my toes down the drain. Afterwards, my feet feeling more revived than beaten, I’d waddle into the kitchen where herbs and spices drowned my Ivory Soap skin. Sounds of food and smells of music made Mom move. The kitchen wasn’t big enough for the both of us, but we’d make do. She would pucker her lips, snap her fingers and bake her bootie between stirs and chops, between breaths of song. Pop heard lectures in culinary linguistics by his own Doctor Dad. Ham 101. It was hot with no AC or fans when I sat in his flat, open windows barred above a French café, while he made sludge. Sludge is what you get when you over-flour and over-cook the gravy. My sister never did care for the kitchen, until she was smitten with a bit of bug tea and eczema. Then the tasteless cardboard gained ground and found its way to our doorstep riding in paper bags. It was about time I took a culinary class. During the final show-off my mother didn’t realize the sushi was mine. Back home, I found the man she married finishing up a bowl of Granola -- his specialty, because to him, nothing else -- not even seconds -- made any sense. Salmon MoonDo not lift
Those bones from the river's bank -- For the trees will topple. Even the bear knows When the pink fish swim again Egg Moon X-ray
an egg to see the eye of our vast universe: dense & full of the silent yet immense makings of perfection; this imperfect orb has provided Springtime relief from hunger, thanks to a lovely thing we call sunlight. Another Oedipus to His Mother
-- after Breasts, 1988, Robert Mapplethorp
The line between your belly button and your breast bone stretch me like soft rubber. My arms are afraid my palms might melt; I've been framed a square. You jet out from the angle near my own house into the blackness, The empty space where a tired head could rest upon your sweet pillows. I pulse. I fail to sleep. La FourchetteMy father knew he was the only one
who understood me. I dressed like a gypsy lady, wore hand-sewn hippie dresses from Mom’s wardrobe while my sister found the Poloroid. I wasn’t gay because of it, I wasn’t gay, because my father tucked me into bed one night, and asked what I think about before I turn out the lights. I didn’t say, Boys. So after the divorce, after the crying, the rejection, the pain of abandonment, he took me downstairs to meet Bennie, because he knew the way to heal my heart was to involve French food. It was here I learned there was more to life than clams, that a funny way to spell muscle meant shellfish soaked in white wine. I learned then that there was yet another type of mousse, and homonyms made a lovely theme for a palatable meal. My dessert was a gift from the gods, revealing the inferior mortality of pudding. On our way back upstairs, my father armed with a better way to make a steak, with a chuckle, he admitted he may have been wrong all along; as I sported a wide smile below twinkling eyes. I felt rather gay. Mark of the Afghan Girl
1985: Villanelle
Do not come to me. Do not succumb to my timidity. I’ve known only fear and death on this land. There is no home for me, no place for a refugee. I see you watching me. What is it that you see? I am Pashtun; this war is peace by my father’s hand. Do not come to me. Do not succumb to my timidity. Do not ask my age. Do not ask what cannot be. I saw my parents die. They were buried in the sand. There is no home for me, no place for a refugee. My wide, fierce, sea green eyes encompass me. They keep your distance wherever you stand. Do not come to me. Do not succumb to my timidity. My long disheveled hair portrays my dubiety. That I am here, I am not where God had planned. There is no home for me, no place for a refugee. And yet you come; here you come to set me free. I see how you start within, I see how you command. Do not come to me. Do not succumb to my timidity. There is no home for me, no place for a refugee. 2002: Dubeiti I came. You found me. Sharbat Gula is my name. I am a woman now, my newborn died with no name. The desert thinned my eyes. My wedding taught me joy. A new war -- I am no one, still. Alive is my name. |
Wort MoonWhen a wort finds the time to kill
or turn your mind to madness as is its potent will, then no use in fighting your blindness. Double, double toil and trouble; (eat these bugs, they'll beat your rash) Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble (the alewives work to stock your stash). Drink your garden, brew your plan; the wortwives burned to save their clan. Gosse's Egg
Admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that the Creator had before his mind a projection of the whole life-history of the globe, commencing with any point which the geologist may imagine to have been a fit commencing point, and ending with some unimaginable acme in the indefinitely distant future. He determines to call this idea into actual existence, not at the supposed commencing point, but at some stage or other of its course. It is clear, then, that at the selected stage it appears, exactly as it would have appeared at that moment of its history, if all the preceding eras of its history had been real. -- Philip Henry Gosse
Tomorrow is my birthday. My wrinkled waterlogged skin will slip into that diachronic universe as my anxious old-soul brow faces the lights. All my truths have been washed in the suds of pre-creation. Now rinsed, their clean slates show signs of wear. I could share the stories with you, of when I nearly drowned in a pool, when Father left home for that last time, the day I married, the day I turned Father myself. I could tell you how they all hardened into lies. But just before I start my mid-life crisis, reality has positioned itself for tomorrow; as its past softens the truth of its fantasy, my world is about to begin. 
Results Received: Stage Three The leaves through the window are being blown away
from the branches on which they willingly made their home, or so it seems. The unseen force that shifts them towards me, then away, then around my vision eventually calms, and the leaves grasp to their mother for dear life before they are thrown about again, waiting for the flash and crack as the heavy drops begin to fall. I do not need the dark gray duvet hovering above me as a reminder that this is not the first storm to come today. I am still drenched from being caught in the one that came early; I woke up this morning expecting sunny skies, the passing puffs of clouds just a memory of potential disaster. But when I looked out the window one dim cloud had the nerve to dampen the outlook that was given me. The sky turned overcast gently, full of respect, remembered every detail, but never darkened completely. I went out into it because I had to meet it head on. The thunder never entered my deaf ears; the lightning never shook hands with an arm of my eye glasses. I felt occasional drops squeeze my shirt collar, or slap my knee. I heard no one around me to feel the weight of my Adam’s Apple dropping ever so slightly down my throat. But I was in it nonetheless, the storm came without my knowing it, soaking my socks. It wasn’t until after I jumped from the tempest outside back into the dry house that I noticed how wet I was. Clothes clung to my body as I desperately tried to remove them. I grabbed a dry towel and gave it water by passing it over my body, sighing all the while. Now, as I lie on my couch exhausted, looking out the window, waiting for this new storm that I know is coming, I wonder how much I will experience the sensations as they come over me, notice that I am getting drenched, or at least notice when I need to run -- dodging each drop as it free falls above me -- into the security of a dry home. An Oracle Receives Alexander
You I call Golden Locks Creature.
You step up and close in while Same Creature hides behind Side Wall. Suddenly this space smells of olives. You kneel and display golden locks. You stand; your leg is dirty. You speak in tongue and I am nothing but a large rock but I feel Sudden Pressure nods me forward. Eyes widen; you speak again, again in tongue, watch me and wait, confused. You hand me something I cannot take: I have no hands; I am a rock. Sudden Pressure comes again, tightens, and I nod once more. You smile. I still cannot tell your tongue and watch you hand me another something I cannot take. Sudden Pressure nods in answer; you shout, cup your hands, look upward, kneel one last time. As you stand I see my friend Tiny Pebble stuck on you. Tiny Pebble tries to free itself and jump as you turn to leave but stays stuck to your knee. I am alone now; you are a ghost, adrift. My friend is gone; it will find another patch to home. You will not come again, my Golden Locks Creature. |