By Dawn Corrigan
Of Parmesan I sing,
a hard sharp dry cheese, served grated,
and to eat it I seemed fated
for in my youth it covered everything.
A score of years, give or take,
I spent on those Atlantic shores
until Aeolus rent the doors
and carried me upon his back
far from that land where I was born
and lived among the kin of kin;
a wondrous land of surf and sin
whose natives refine oil and corn:
New Jersey is its name.
At first I landed to the south
of that fair land where I'd set forth,
in a state that shared the same
coastline I had always known;
Florida, this place was called,
and there the people were footballed:
they dwelt in an exotic zone
where young men performed sacred rites
on a field of measured grass,
their lessons run, and kick, and pass;
there taps poured forth all through the nights.
But when I'd wandered for three years
beneath palm trees and that strong sun
I realized my task there was done:
Enough palm trees! No more cheap beers!
Then once again the King of Winds
brought me to another place;
this time beneath a mountain's face
in the Valley of Mormons,
those creatures famed in myth and tale
yet even stranger in real life:
although they only give one wife
to each full-grown, eligible male,
and not a dozen, as they once did,
they still believe each family's head
will earn a planet when he's dead,
strange symbols on his garments hid.
Among these people, by the Lake,
I dwelt five years, and dwell here still,
and learn to dip my memory's quill
yet deeper, but always I ache
for the companions of my youth,
the aunts and uncles, friends and cousins,
too hard to count, but there were dozens,
and if I'm to tell the whole truth
I must confess I miss the sound
of the waves, their crash and hiss,
their murmurs like a lover's kiss
against the patient, listening ground,
perhaps as much as anything,
for though the mountains here are grand,
I'd trade them for a hill of sand
and the seawind's briny sting.
And now I wonder: Why did I leave?
Was it really necessary
that I should drift so very
far? Who needs these graduate degrees?
There was no goddess on my case.
What makes a woman leave her home
and drift like a cloud of seafoam?
Why can't I stay in just one place?
O tell me Muse, if you would, please.
And while you're at it, also tell:
Why did the kin I loved so well
smother everything with cheese?
Dawn Corrigan's poetry, fiction, and short plays have appeared recently or
are forthcoming at Hobart, 55 Words, 3711 Atlantic, writeThis, The Raging
Face, Oregon Literary Review, Defenestration, Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz,
and VerbSap. Her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown. She lives
in Sandy, Utah, rather to her surprise. |
