Botched Introduction at the Potluck
The bald man- who I call Joe instead of Bill-
waxes on about cold fronts and invasives,
hard to bear during flag-waving season.
But before I can escape, he asks why
I mention Joe. “Oh, I meant to say Bill.”
“The problem with root vegetables,” he says…
is they’re all swollen, I think.
At that moment I know my curried eggplant,
placed next to farm cheese, will leave a stink.
Cheddar is common and yes, they will talk.
I pitched forks with them, but did I thank
those hawk-eyes scouring four corners
for hidden plastic?
“The problem with plastics,” I say,
tossing a fork, “is that they can poison roots.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”
I’m not sure who quit first,
who corked the sparkle.
Long before I passed on the raw goat
from Remember Sweetgum,
I reckon I was doomed.
I’d never get away with a farm.
Tradition
First, the fork, then the knife, then the spoon.
Order, propriety, tradition.
Start left, it’s like reading a book,
the blade turns in, the blade turns in
(easy to forget that one)
Fork. Then knife. Then spoon.
Three times a day. This reinforces
the way to set tables
and the way to hide under them,
under the fork, the knife, the spoon,
the fist on the table, the shattered glass
the shattered girl the shattered glass
girl turns left then right
the blade turns in, the blade turns in
Early Bird Special
He crowned it duck Valdez in honor of the oil spill.
Newlyweds we were, pre-war, nestled in a
one-bedroom fortress on 48th and Third.
I papered our entry in royal paisley, crowned it
hall for performing gastronomic feats:
pan-seared fowl on a pilaf bed (cherries on the side)
served to in-laws who forked the hazardous bird
with caution, handled the flan, slippery and wet
yet, we were satisfied. One wedding guest did
warn me: marriage takes work. We scoffed at that,
strapped on roller blades and sped off to Shakespeare
in the park. If Gristedes said no to blades, why,
we’d shop at Fairway. Better produce anyway.
1989 smelled fresh to the invincible.
Still Life
From a fruit bowl they fall,
fall from their graceful
arrangement. Grapefruits
strike my morning coffee.
It’s good mourning
each ruined orchard,
it yields nothing
to bruise about.
Knife, cut, wince,
an honest squirt
in the eye helps me
wake up to art,
those flattened volumes
of dish, glass and fruit? Cezanne
gave his favorite to Gauguin.
Even this had to be sold at auction.
Heather Newman is a second-year MFA/Creative Writing candidate at The New School. Her work has appeared in Matter, The Potomac, Two Hawks Quarterly, Aji Magazine, The New Verse News and the Paulinskill Poetry Project anthology, Voices From Here, Vol. II.
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