A Literary Feast

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Posts from the “Uncategorized” Category

Too Much Trouble Tea

Posted on April 18th, 2013

Tea is too much trouble Like friends requiring Time and attention. Better to have those glad to see you Whenever they show up Than folks in need of Time and attention.               Too much trouble is this tea As arranging Sapphic syllables Or brewing loose leaves green Better still your flip nattering And errant wallowing Than to swap auspices bearing Time and attention. Like these bags steeping of Too Much Trouble Tea.   For Suzanne, Book Nook Volunteer @ Teton Library Jackson, WY    

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What April Opens

Posted on April 18th, 2013

Already the sun has lapped the snowdrifts clean from the yard. Now it comes begging at the kitchen window, as though each pane   were a sheet of ice or the glaze on a cake to celebrate the end of something. Winter, maybe. But the soil rests untilled,   the seeds unplanted. I shield my eyes from the glare. It asks too much too soon: we are creatures of occasional darkness   still in the lull of frosts. We hunger, but not for green. The cellar offers last year’s roots and the ghosts of leeks   where one or two of Hades’ rivers cut through on their run to irrigate the cool, infertile bedrock. A month or two   will split the garden, bounty…

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A Fino, A Benzo, an Oloroso

Posted on April 18th, 2013

A slow, rolling terror had me reaching for a Fino. Slowly, terroir tried its best to take the place of a Benzo. The half-life was too short; brine, adrenaline, made me cry out “Oloroso!” Having my fix, and wanting to mix, down went the Fino, and a Benzo! Oh no. And if I must (and I must) pick an agonist for intensification of the effects, Fo sho, Oloroso. Amber waves of ocean syrup, nuts, berries, grains, and tangs to which You can’t say no. And, now, Oloroso translates to “OH GOD, MY LEGS DON’T WORK” Dios mio, dios mio. Just sit for a bit and cast off your FitBit, you’re going to be here for a while as you know.

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I Want To Tell You Why I Sometimes Cry In The Produce Aisle

Posted on April 18th, 2013

My friend has a habit of falling in love with fruit; mostly the tropical ones with thin skin that are heavy and soft and inherently warm he claims that they fit in his palm resting between the thumb and pinky along his life line like the curve of a woman’s hip or a heart naked, scared outside of its chest.   He cradles them like eggs loving them giving them back the gentle roundness of their birth in the humid places of the earth that also make spines and venoms and biting things, and he eats them with a gratitude that is humbling to see.   Except for this one cherimoya in which I think he recognized too much of himself so carried around…

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To The Teeth

Posted on April 18th, 2013

1.   You pinch, she says her knuckles punched in faces, cracked with work, breathing their sentence to me across the cold air, putting the knife in my new hand, it must be new it is shaking and then the crisp exact nature of the first cut– onions, blood.     2.   You take on knowing the way of this, cloth licking ink, water, muscle linking nerve, heavy with a thin sharp edge and its motions the song that parts and pieces your minutes, hours, the deep hard heat of taking from the whole, first one leaf then another another another.           3.   The days are some sleepless rotation, bitter black coffee, sly dirt dawns, cold one at a…

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Family Common Eats

Posted on March 18th, 2013

In the winter of 2005, I took a job as a research reporter for the New York Times Beijing bureau. The capital was blustery and bitter cold, coming off another long haul winter. A fresh round of yellow dust kicked up across the city.  Each month the Times paid me 5000 yuan, or roughly $620 at the time. Rent was 2000 yuan. 3000 yuan left. One yuan would get me around on the buses. Three yuan bought a ride on the subway. Taxis were in the double digits, plus tip.  Walking was free. But walking makes you hungry. So five yuan was enough to buy a full breakfast with soymilk. Twenty yuan, by contrast, was not enough to get a small latte. You plot…

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Oh Canada!

Posted on March 18th, 2013

When I was young, my best friend and I were inseparable. From the age of 5 we spent almost every day together, and as we grew older I was invited to practically every family vacation or event.  Seders, visiting the cousins in the woods in Virginia, grandma’s house in Indiana, Christmas parties, and then, when we were maybe 11 or 12, Canada! We had spent many hours together in the way back of her parents’ station wagon- you remember those rear-facing seats? watching the miles fly by, reading or gossiping or napping, on to the next stop. But Canada!  We were going to leave the country! This was a big deal! We would start out in Montreal and spend a few days there, and…

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Cherimoya

Posted on March 18th, 2013

Listen to the lady at the produce stand.   It’s 8am on a Saturday morning. You arrived in Maui the night before on a flight too late to be believed, drove the length of the island from north to south under a starry sky brighter than you could have imagined. Your boyfriend put the radio on reggae and rolled the windows down, because that’s what you do when you’re driving a long, straight road in the dark through fields of sugar cane that cast long, moon-lit shadows on the road and you want to be absolutely sure that this place with the palm trees is Hawaii and not some Inception-substrate dream that you’ll soon wake from to find you’re actually still in Alaska, shivering…

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Blood, Guts, And All The Rest

Posted on March 18th, 2013

“Saturday is gringo day,” our hostel owner told us. “Prices too high, too many tourists. Don’t go Saturday.” We were headed to Otavalo, Ecuador, for its famous Saturday market day. People mainly go there for that, hundreds of tourists streaming in to buy hand-knit caps shaped like cartoon characters, Technicolor alpaca sweaters, and “hand-carved” wooden replicas of Machu Picchu (yes, the one in Peru) to put on their mantles or to give to coworkers and pet-sitters. Over the years enough tourists showed up that now every day of the week the central plaza is clogged with souvenirs and mass-produced Andean tchotchkes, but Saturdays are still the big show. On Saturdays the entire town turns into a market, stalls and street vendors snaking through the streets…

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CREPES!…..Or Not

Posted on March 18th, 2013

In Old Town Quebec there is a creperie a few steps off of the tourist’s beaten path. Small and jam-packed.  Don’t be surprised if you are asked to share a table with another party to expedite things – and by expedite, I mean if you want your crepe before the next mealtime rolls around. It feels dark and old inside. The wine options are red or white, glass or carafe. The side salad served with your crepe has one dressing choice. The staff is a rotating cast of twenty-something ladies in corduroys or ankle length skirts, vintage tee-shirts, boots, and head scarves. The menu is a long list of filling items: veggies, meats, cheese, sauces – like a pizza joint – plus fruits, chocolate,…

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