Chef!Chef!Chef!

Miss White would consume them nightly, cooking magazines—Food & Wine, BON APPETIT, Cooking and Food, Gourmet, Cook’s Illustrated—and all while standing in our kitchen. She especially enjoyed reading her magazines aloud, turning the glossy pages and reading the recipes in a frantic voice—and on top of everything; chairs, countertops, voices, ceilings. Sometimes her voice carried like an opera singer’s and sometimes it clamored with attention deficit disorder. She sounded like the leftovers, when things are pushed through too fast and what remains makes a sound something just audible enough to be inaudible—but she was there. She was all high-pitched and hard to tell.

She read her reviews and her recipes out from under her wig of childlike hair, red and terribly cut. All of her, bony elbows and satin skin, beneath those thin red wisps that framed not her face, but the teenage figure of a boy. Somehow, she almost made skin that looked-to-bruise-easy sexual, almost. She was terrible. She was what is left after and changed. Rotting. And the what is left, the what was before and the what is now, is hidden compactly, concentratedly, completely in alien moons. In dark-star eyes. Far off. And when she smiled at all, if she ever smiled, each part was small, especially the many parts of her behind it that I never knew. Miss White.

Miss White was Martha, but she didn’t like that. She was Tuckie, but I didn’t like that. If she was anything she was an evil miss, a witch. Miss White. She was briefly a chef in my kitchen, always my annoyance, and once my roommate’s girlfriend. I think he knew—everyone knew and I didn’t know who everyone was—but they said she was a lot of people’s girlfriend. He didn’t know. I could tell, but I couldn’t tell him or I guess I tried to tell him, but he didn’t listen. He was too infatuated with all of her off beats, her many sounds; too taken aback by her skinny knees and whatever spilled out and up and oozed from just above them. She was abused. It was clearly so—it was the part that showed. He told me rape and I told him trouble—I told him many etc. etc. etc. stay aways. She was and he did and I was there to watch.

She put my friend through the ringer. He held onto every part of her. Storm survivor all the way. She broke him. Anyway, she turned him to many little pieces. He told me he used to play Beatles’ records with the hope that he would hear her sing, that he never lifted the needle anymore. That was after he read her diary. She never lifted his needle anymore. She fucked other guys. She documented it. Many, many tallies. And though this was sad and that was sad, nothing more terrible than what she did in our kitchen. Miss White fancied herself a chef.

She would leave food and utensils all about—scallions on the cutting board next to the honey, next to the peeler, three knives of varying sizes covered in garlic near the stove top, flour in a trail leading to a large silver bowl–just to be the space between the stove and the kitchenette, just to be all of herself in one place. She ignored her boyfriend there. She ignored the whole world like the silent black of space in our kitchen. She consumed and covered and destroyed. The kitchen. Eclipse. He would stare at her. He would wait. It was silent, but for Chop.Chop.Chop and Hiss.Hiss.Hiss and in space no one can hear your scream. She would do ugly things in those silences. She would hurt him through silence. She would hurt him through singing. She used him for his cast-iron pots and pans. She loved the granite and stainless steel. She would suck the air out. He was screaming.

Her creations were hot and cold and exotic and alien. Like her they were half cooked and oh what might have been. One night there were pork pot stickers that filled the air with waves of cilantro and squishy wet meat. It made my stomach hurt. There was garlic-honey soy sauce covering a plate of peeled avocadoes, next to a tomato and spinach salad that was doused in black pepper and balsamic vinegar. It made all me hurt, no matter what she made. She was there. In the kitchen. Steaming hot. Almost every night.

Before the kitchen and the table and the countertops, before the ruins of veggies and fruits and foreign meats and before the wrappers and plastic and garbage and spoils and during the cheating and the yelling and, for lack of better word cooking, she was terrible. She was terrible at the front door, that’s where it would start. She was terrible before my roommate even opened the front door. She would hurry my roommate who would grab his coat in a whirlwind and spin to the buzzer and listen. She would scream for him, his name with too many letters and hyphens and additional four letter words and through the intercom, from the steps, through the door.

Miss White would show up and yell and then Miss White and my roommate would go out for provisions. For the show. For her masterpiece. Every night was her special program: What Happens in the Kitchen!

Some nights she would stand with her hand around her mouth and point to things my roommate should clean. I need the Asian Cleaver for the chops, to tenderize—to mince the garlic.The carving knife to thin.I need the paring knife for the peppers!I need the sink.Clean it! She would suck just the tip of her thumb as she watched him, her tiny eyes moving rapidly as he rushed. She abused him. When he came close she would question his bathing habits. When is the last time you showered?You're disgusting. She yelled and ordered and withheld, all the fucking and told him ugh, you’re the one, sure, if he ever asked, but it would always worsen and it was worst around dinnertime. She wouldn’t talk. Miss White was good with a knife. Like any good chef, exact.

She would wait for my roommate at the steps and walk with short-strides, half steps as he followed behind, to the nearest specialized grocery on the corner after the corner, after that one next to the corner we lived on. She would walk quickly, filled with loathing, talking in tongues about everything. And nothing. I thought for a while it was the hurry that my roommate wanted. That Miss White gave him something to follow. I imagine the only thing better for him than walking behind the oddity of her complaints and criticisms and her raves and reviews, was when she walked quietly, letting him ask her what’s wrong. I imagine he loved that. I imagine she somehow made him.

He told me she would let him follow her up and down that store isles as she picked a product off a shelf—that she turned each everything over at different angles, checking for bruises—that the small Tack.Tack.Tack of her heels was his favorite sound-that she would allow him to buy everything, even though she doesn’t like it. I think it made him glad. I think it made her feel special. Both in a very similar way. Two people miserable. Two people together.

One night she spent hours making matzo ball soup, the whole while ranting about cheeseburgers and how badly she wanted one, but to no one. That night my roommate didn’t wander circles back and forth, he sat in the corner, arms folded over knees, looking long. What she could have done/said I didn’t understand. I never understood. Never, Miss White. Never. But I got close one time, once. The closest I got to their mystery was after she stayed late, after the baking and the stabbing and tenderizing and overcooking. One night they watched a vampire movie, B-rate terrible awful one and I think it was the closest they ever got, the closest they ever could get. They were sucking each other’s blood.

I have tried to forget the two of them. I have moved and moved out. I moved out two years ago, but I still can’t shake her. Her. I still remember. I remember exactly how she looked, exactly how she sounded. I remember once she pulled a bloody rack of lamb from the oven and danced before it. She screamed, I’m a chef! Chef!Chef!Chef!

Passengers

From and for my sister

She imagined the brown coffee skin of his hands sweating, held together tightly, the plastic of his passport between them. She imagined the hot breathless night, the dirty white sheets of a dirty hotel in a dirty country and the people who kept him there. She imagined the dirty unspeakable people who had swept in through his window, taking his money, clothing, and computer as he slept. She could feel the darkness enter the window of their bedroom and gently take her sleeping dreams away, it was the same darkness whose evil makes things vanish in the night. Her hand reached over, to where he once slept and he was not there. Now he was never there, so she opened her eyes and watched the red numbers of the clock move slowly and turned off the alarm before the siren got a chance to sing.

*

Every morning is different now. Now, the sun doesn’t move, every day it commutes and turns in front of her before passing by. On her way to work she drives in silence. At the stoplight she looks out the window, up at the passengers waiting on the deck for the elevated train. She notices how they stand, some at the tracks impatient and glancing at their wrists. Others looking out, following the morning traffic and others still, alone.

Shuffling feet are the nervous—legs heavily shifting under the weight of day. The testy have an itch unreachable, their dance steps not right, their heels scratching shins and toes tapping the blue warning bubbles that, for their too-close-toes, says safe concrete is a length back.

She saw the way hands fell to sides, some curled up, balled and some still open, as if something unseen was standing too, beckoning unheard next to them.

Hold me.

She sees the way men in ties wipe at their foreheads in the sun, inching just under the hairline in secret, eyes wondering for the watching, wiping the salt water away on the thigh of their slacks.

She saw the way that purses fell below the dress line onto the legs of women, their forearms bare, naked and open—fingers readjusting on thin leather straps—struggling with a weight too heavy to carry close.

She saw a small Mexican woman standing by herself, arms across her chest, hugging a brown paper bag. She realized the woman was staring back at her. Why? She thought about waiving to her, but the light changed and she hurried on to work.

*

That night the cat food fell to the tile of the kitchen floor and she cried in a can that was filled with the smell of fish guts, wishing things were different. That night, cutting tomatoes for a salad, she realized she had set the table for two. That night she thought about the passengers, about the Mexican woman, the way her arms held tightly the contents of that paper bag.

That night she skipped dinner, left things as they were and got into bed hungry because, whispering softly to her two cats, that’s the way it should be, that’s the way it should be.

lantern chant

shaking down squeezed down didn't know don’t know
nestled deep parts kept ribcage secret
underneath heart burn underneath lit bright
burning something lantern-like stomach
all of glass right light flames hard flap wings
unfurls bigger than bigger than elsewhere
and anyplace everyplace swallowed whole beneath
ribcage secret taste wine taste wind
bluest flame bluest flame bluest flame bluest

The women at my age who marry

are all legs and elbows,

all smiles too big. All of them

just wanting to be kissed. And now

they all think they are very,

very happy.

Of Sleeping, Of Waking

In Seattle I asked a friend
who years and many miles had changed
the way

in which time moved

and he said In an instant.

And when I asked him
if he ever thought it would slow back down

he said No.

I this instant, I close my eyes and pretend

in this instant, like a child
I lay down to the Earth, to the past
and feel the grass on my neck
and feel my spine settle
to what lies beneath it

in this instant, I ask Jesus Christ
to be Jesus Christ
and though I’m far from too old I can’t
and I feel that, as time passes I wouldn’t want to

like any bitter adult, I want my time back and
like a bitter adult-child,
I want my friend back
and

like the both of them in the morning,
I open my eyes and Oh no

Oh no

oh no.

Of Growing Up

We had a pop can fireworks show,
a backyard Forth of July
and every girl wore a tiny t-shirt,
every one the same bouncy hair.

That was the night I melted away the sole of my shoes
and left globs of black rubber dried

the night we stole beer cans from parents,
after I disappeared into the movements of dusk,
before I went back behind the trees.

I remember orange glowing faces.
kissing on the edge of the yard.
I remember not having a way home.

Blured to the very edge, I believe my eyes wet that night darker.

And when the first cans exploded in the fire
embers out and up, raining down from the closing sky
I remember we all gathered close,
watching to see how bright it would get.

a thank you

many are things 'no longer'
and in the gone away there are photographs,
4 by 6 inch windows
in which to look out on a world that was

and if i spread out all of you,
the candy bars, red carpet and wild smiles, just right
they whisper -

i made your mother

and only then, grandma
is the what you were and so much of what you weren't gone away

and though you may, she never will