| Alas, Alfredo |
[Apr. 15th, 2012|08:48 pm]
rejectomorph
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I forgot to buy broccoli. There was a crowd around it at the market and I thought I'd go back after picking up the tomatoes, but then forgot. Now I must eat fettuccine Alfredo without broccoli. There are snap peas and green beans, and enough greens and cucumber and fresh tomatoes for a salad, but no broccoli. It must have been the warm spring day that put that crowd around the broccoli bin, and it must have been the thought of returning outdoors (even just to cross the parking lot) that made me forget to go back and pick out a head of the perfect vegetable to go with fettuccine Alfredo.
Spring is at fault for so many things: the pollen that is making me sneeze, the grass that will soon have to be mowed, the dandelions that I never saw bloom but which went to wild seed seemingly overnight. Spring is bringing those strange dreams it brings, too— the ones I never quite remember but which leave me with a feeling of displacement that lasts for an hour after I wake up, a feeling that then returns at times throughout the day. All this I can forgive, but I will mourn that missing broccoli all through dinner, and probably after as well. Oh, spring!
Sunday Verse
Hood
by C.K. Williams
Remember me? I was the one
in high school you were always afraid of.
I kept cigarettes in my sleeve, wore
engineer's boots, long hair, my collar
up in the back and there were always
girls with me in the hallways.
You were nothing. I had it in for you—
when I peeled rubber at the lights
you cringed like a teacher.
And when I crashed and broke both lungs
on the wheel, you were so relieved
that you stroked the hard Ford paint
like a breast and your hands shook.
Oh, and happy 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. I'm sure James Cameron has been celebrating. I'll just clink my beer glass against the ice cube tray in memoriam. |
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