I sat in airports.
Crossing and re-crossing my legs. Rows of pleather, arm-linked seating; PA loud in Arabic, French, German. English?
Coiling and twisting in tiny plane recliners. Turkey in gravy like grey, viscous pudding.
Thin lemon in my gin. Stiff blanket in my lap. Adjust and re-adjust and white-hot cramping in my calf.
And then I came home.
I walked in.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Extremities
I wake and my fingers are dry. I’ll start fires if I snap. I haven’t been drinking enough. Water, I mean.
Pure, draining blood on the pink, grooved tiles; licking itself viscously along geometric straights and angles.
I could tie you up in the old medina, get you lost while I dance like on rooftops.
“Cutting in” the shortening like my mom would do. Like she was making baking powder biscuits. Eventually I stuff my desert hands into the dough, working it, plying and kneading, pumping the slick mound and folding it in on itself. It feels good to use my fingers; the oiliness soothes.
Rolling out irregular tortillas with an empty vodka bottle.
Frosted glass and peeling label. Fajita tangle simmering in its own juice; bell pepper onion cumin jalapeno hot sauce chicken sweet corn tomato white bean lime juice oregano.
Delicious. Happy cinco de mayo, ladies.
I know my feet best. I can navigate the souk without looking up. It’s a forced skill. One I plan to promptly discard. Once I can look up without it being provocative.
Give me heels.
Give me strappy-weave pumps that zip behind the ankle.
High and clutching and chicly kitsch. Watch my legs tie knots, knees bruised. Return me to my swagger.
I love marzipan.
When I was little I used to get on these little arts-and-crafts kicks. Pulling down three of my children’s activity books, I would flip through the familiar pages, searching for a perfect afternoon task. Usually disappointed by the ever-narrowing selection of crafts yet un-attempted, often disappointed by the end result.
I remember once opening the big, white one, leafing through to pictures of smooth tear-drop mice in eye-catching cerulean, black licorice tails. Showing my mom, I pointed to my proposed creative endeavor.
I had been saving this one.
“It’s just marzipan,” she said, glancing at the page pityingly, a tight-lipped smile.
Well in that case…
I remember standing on a stool beside the microwave, its tiny ridges denting my soles, food-dyed fingers molding sugary blobs in marbled blue and green. Never a recipe conformist, an overwhelming emphasis on the powdered sugar component. Purposefully instilling no rodent-resemblance in either form or function. No tiny peanut ears. Crusty cakes with hardening edges and peaks.
I wasn’t trying to replicate the glossy mice, those irresistible smooth sweet blue tapers. Obviously.
That would have been unnecessary. And beneath me.
It was “just marzipan” after all. Radio playing against the opposite wall. I remember tipping the stool, energized, I loved that song. But I wasn’t supposed to be listening to it. I don't know now if the rule was introduced on this occasion or prior.
But the memory is gridded like with stiff window-screens.
Not entirely accessible, grey and brittle and subtle-sad. Like feeling a weight but not knowing from where. Maybe because the song was technically off-limits.
Maybe because it was “just marzipan”.
Avoid the chicken foot, discarded in its post-mortem splay. Silver-red sardine remnants, clawed into soggy and iridescent lace by two million meowing strays. Tiny tea-cup kittens blindly tripping over neighbors and onto a Laughing Cow wedge. Coarse and mange-mapped toms, missing eyes and tail-tips and scouring plastic bag corners for sunlit stretches of cardboard.
“Why would we touch the water heater? What reason could we possible have for messing with it?”
“Well there are a lot of you.” “And we belief the plumber.”
There goes 300 DH.
“And you will have to now pay for utilities.” “And you will have to now pay for ‘extra’ residents.” “And you will have to now pay a little more. Just ‘cause.” “Just so we don't throw your things into the street.”
No leverage. Absolute powerlessness. We roll over on our backs, twelve bellies up. Hating. Counting dirhams in our furious fists.
“Two-thousand-one-hundred, two-thousand-two-hundred…”
Die “Empty-Sam”. Die Sidekick.
Gruyere. The papery film beneath Edam’s red wax. Clay-soft wedges of buttery Brie. Ever noticed that things never cross-sect in real life like in advertisements? Knives always manage to crush while they cut. Maybe mine are just too dull. Maybe my whole life I have only known dull knives.
Afternoons spent in the shadowy white rectangle; clock always indicating sometime near six. Typing and typing and
“…most prolific answer. “Happiness” or “joy” (variations on “سعادة” and "فرحة", respectfully), were articulated by 13 women, and self-“comfort” (راحة) was an emotional response shared by 12 different…”
and
“…was 38-years-old, out of the 52 respondents who provided their age, 39 were 22-years-old or younger; meaning that 75% of those surveyed were either 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, or 22-years-of-age (and only 25% …”
and
to Kristen Baltrum: “…I am tired...”
Squatting on rooftops when locked-out. Playing “dead bird catapult” with embarrassing arms. Towel still on the line. Salt in a bowl.
The coffee percolated into thick swamp black. And I drank it all, still tossing at 5am. Feet cramping whenever I stretch.
Kathy I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
Men’s toenails bullied into cataracted husks; thick and capped as tortoise shells.
Cuticles catching
Pure, draining blood on the pink, grooved tiles; licking itself viscously along geometric straights and angles.
I could tie you up in the old medina, get you lost while I dance like on rooftops.
“Cutting in” the shortening like my mom would do. Like she was making baking powder biscuits. Eventually I stuff my desert hands into the dough, working it, plying and kneading, pumping the slick mound and folding it in on itself. It feels good to use my fingers; the oiliness soothes.
Rolling out irregular tortillas with an empty vodka bottle.
Frosted glass and peeling label. Fajita tangle simmering in its own juice; bell pepper onion cumin jalapeno hot sauce chicken sweet corn tomato white bean lime juice oregano.
Delicious. Happy cinco de mayo, ladies.
I know my feet best. I can navigate the souk without looking up. It’s a forced skill. One I plan to promptly discard. Once I can look up without it being provocative.
Give me heels.
Give me strappy-weave pumps that zip behind the ankle.
High and clutching and chicly kitsch. Watch my legs tie knots, knees bruised. Return me to my swagger.
I love marzipan.
When I was little I used to get on these little arts-and-crafts kicks. Pulling down three of my children’s activity books, I would flip through the familiar pages, searching for a perfect afternoon task. Usually disappointed by the ever-narrowing selection of crafts yet un-attempted, often disappointed by the end result.
I remember once opening the big, white one, leafing through to pictures of smooth tear-drop mice in eye-catching cerulean, black licorice tails. Showing my mom, I pointed to my proposed creative endeavor.
I had been saving this one.
“It’s just marzipan,” she said, glancing at the page pityingly, a tight-lipped smile.
Well in that case…
I remember standing on a stool beside the microwave, its tiny ridges denting my soles, food-dyed fingers molding sugary blobs in marbled blue and green. Never a recipe conformist, an overwhelming emphasis on the powdered sugar component. Purposefully instilling no rodent-resemblance in either form or function. No tiny peanut ears. Crusty cakes with hardening edges and peaks.
I wasn’t trying to replicate the glossy mice, those irresistible smooth sweet blue tapers. Obviously.
That would have been unnecessary. And beneath me.
It was “just marzipan” after all. Radio playing against the opposite wall. I remember tipping the stool, energized, I loved that song. But I wasn’t supposed to be listening to it. I don't know now if the rule was introduced on this occasion or prior.
But the memory is gridded like with stiff window-screens.
Not entirely accessible, grey and brittle and subtle-sad. Like feeling a weight but not knowing from where. Maybe because the song was technically off-limits.
Maybe because it was “just marzipan”.
Avoid the chicken foot, discarded in its post-mortem splay. Silver-red sardine remnants, clawed into soggy and iridescent lace by two million meowing strays. Tiny tea-cup kittens blindly tripping over neighbors and onto a Laughing Cow wedge. Coarse and mange-mapped toms, missing eyes and tail-tips and scouring plastic bag corners for sunlit stretches of cardboard.
“Why would we touch the water heater? What reason could we possible have for messing with it?”
“Well there are a lot of you.” “And we belief the plumber.”
There goes 300 DH.
“And you will have to now pay for utilities.” “And you will have to now pay for ‘extra’ residents.” “And you will have to now pay a little more. Just ‘cause.” “Just so we don't throw your things into the street.”
No leverage. Absolute powerlessness. We roll over on our backs, twelve bellies up. Hating. Counting dirhams in our furious fists.
“Two-thousand-one-hundred, two-thousand-two-hundred…”
Die “Empty-Sam”. Die Sidekick.
Gruyere. The papery film beneath Edam’s red wax. Clay-soft wedges of buttery Brie. Ever noticed that things never cross-sect in real life like in advertisements? Knives always manage to crush while they cut. Maybe mine are just too dull. Maybe my whole life I have only known dull knives.
Afternoons spent in the shadowy white rectangle; clock always indicating sometime near six. Typing and typing and
“…most prolific answer. “Happiness” or “joy” (variations on “سعادة” and "فرحة", respectfully), were articulated by 13 women, and self-“comfort” (راحة) was an emotional response shared by 12 different…”
and
“…was 38-years-old, out of the 52 respondents who provided their age, 39 were 22-years-old or younger; meaning that 75% of those surveyed were either 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, or 22-years-of-age (and only 25% …”
and
to Kristen Baltrum: “…I am tired...”
Squatting on rooftops when locked-out. Playing “dead bird catapult” with embarrassing arms. Towel still on the line. Salt in a bowl.
The coffee percolated into thick swamp black. And I drank it all, still tossing at 5am. Feet cramping whenever I stretch.
Kathy I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
Men’s toenails bullied into cataracted husks; thick and capped as tortoise shells.
Cuticles catching
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