M

M was born in Bad Axe, a small town in the joint of Michigan’s thumb, near Lake Huron. She left the day she graduated high school, wore clothes she barely fit into. Parts of her were always squirting out. Married the next year. Followed him east where she spent the winter snorting cocaine off a rented coffee table. When spring broke she stole the car and drove to Nashville. That year she bought a small tourist hotel on an island off South America. She came to Detroit in the off-season. To make hard currency or have a baby. She kept a job with a hedge fund millionaire who watched her swim in his heated pool. I met her at this point in the story, her mouth all stretched and confused by other languages. I have no idea how she found the spoons of applesauce to put in her mouth. Living was an art she made that broke my nerves. She found her way into my spare room for three months. During the evenings she wrote to Brazil, long letters explaining snow.

Kay Ryan refracted the best of it

However carved up
or hair down we get
become and making the best of it
as thought it doesn't matter that
her acres down to one
square foot is our garden
and could be one
we rejoice if it flourishes
one being could nourish us

I'll have what they're having

Restaurant fights are the best fights
You're going at it
all hushed and hidden
knives and sauces
the waiter is in on the game
the room churched in candles
and you've got death
sitting right there on the plate

 

Sayulita (Excerpt)

I think I had always loved her
I remember now
I dreamt a lot then
She often visited
Sometimes quiet and far away
Sometimes in an avocado room with my grandmother
Sometimes catching red butterflies by the lemon tree
We never talked
Never touched
But in each dream
She would stop what she was doing
Slowly lower her arms to her sides
Turn to look at me
Silent
Her eyes as big as eggs

Hesperdina

Buenos Aires
smells like hay
Girls with rusty voices
and lard slicked hair
walk past each other
emptying their pockets
on ice cream scarves




 

Montauk

It's amazing
how little the sea needs
a lathered dispatch
of its excess
crunches underfoot
calcium
pearls
mermaid toenails
all sent ashore
with no memories
except the sound
of itself

Invalid Cookery...Recipe: Bacon Potato Salad

First off, you're going to need an oven full of bacon. Since it's hard to find ovens sold that way any more you'll need to load the bacon yourself. You can start the process with pigs, which is the traditional method, but I don't find much difference in flavor when I buy bacon straight from the store. Plus it saves time.

Lay slices straight into the oven. Stack them till they form a catastrophe of meat, shut the door and light the fire. At this point I realize I should have told you about balloons. You need them to store the smoke, which is what we want in the end, after all. It's fine if you don't have any. Who keeps balloons these days anyway? Use pillowcases or condoms or just improvise, you'll do fine. Find the leak in your oven—there is always one—and hose the draft into your balloons, filling a dozen, a hope's chest worth. Sore them in a cool, dry place.

Let the bacon continue to cook at body temperature. This can take between two and six months. This is a good time to get some other things done, like a divorce.

The potatoes are probably the second most important part of potato salad. You can find them under the earth in the fall. Store them in complete darkness till you need them. For obvious reasons it's important not to surprise them into the light. Better no light at all. Shutter the kitchen, turn off the electricity, work at night. Rub them for luck, remove their pinched eyes. Cup them in your hands, and, one by one, slip them into a lidded pot, boiling with brackish water and leaves from your yard (if you like that sort of thing).

The next part, well, frankly, here I always get a little lost. You need to mix the potatoes and the bacon smoke and some other ingredients, the number and identity of which escapes me. I remember green things, maybe scallion and fennel. There is yellow, an egg yolk, or maybe it's magic marker. And something red, but for the life of me I can't imaging what it is. To be honest, it's just a salad, so who fucking cares. Just fill it with what you have and let it go.

When you think it's ready, pack it in a small stone box and refrigerate. Serves 2 or 3, depending. Best eaten by someone who is leaving.