{"id":12649,"date":"2023-01-12T01:30:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T01:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=12649"},"modified":"2023-01-12T01:33:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T01:33:03","slug":"green-bowl-of-my-grandmother-carol-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=12649","title":{"rendered":"GREEN BOWL OF MY GRANDMOTHER – Carol Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Better than immigrant recipes because tastes lose their tribe.
\nIn this neighborhood few buy lard\u2014 heartstopper, scale-breaker\u2014
\n 
\npreferring the viscous, the transparent, cakes composed with olive oil,
\nand so find a way to zest, bright crumbs on the tongue.
\n 
\nWhat she would possess came after Belarus: awkward marriage
\ncoarse sheet with an itchy seam, cache of mispronounced French words.
\n 
\nThis is the survivor bowl, the nesting red and yellow smashed
\nwhen she packed them for one too many flights
\n 
\ncrossing the country, tossed from house to house in blackbird clothes.
\nThe year we shared a room, solve for x was a slap or so I felt
\n 
\nwhich helped me learn my mother, why her eyelids clenched
\nwhen lightning diamonded the yard in lariats.
\n 
\nWhat stories were stirred into those nights, what revisions, redundancies
\nthe fabled gardens she watered at dawn
\n 
\nemerald lush monstera, philodendron, a furzed violet phalanx
\nblocking light. Her memoirs, buried in a box. Normal school. Nightmare of the buttonhook.
\n 
\nIf something doesn\u2019t bloom do we throw it out, if it roots do we cut it back\u2014
\nthere is something tough, indigestible about genius transliterated.
\n 
\nI can no longer break down milk, wheat, use butter only to heal oven burns.
\nCooking melds foreign elements. I lift the bowl from its dusty place
\n 
\nshow me the binding agent in this thin-skinned phase of life.
\nI\u2019ll tell you what she packed against the children\u2019s quarrels, her shameless threats
\n 
\nonion pricking crocodile tears: a spoon, a stretched-out lace chemise
\na few paste trinkets, Shakespeare\u2019s greatest condensed plays.
\n 
\nWhen born to another language, disambiguation cuts through
\nonly be clear be clear spoon striking table, membrane of orange, papery
\n 
\ndon\u2019t you see the integument, fruit of the unpronounceable
\nyou cannot have an angel on a fir tree you can have some cake.
\n 
\nToday a mealworm curls inside the bowl, is it an omen this tiny husk
\nrolling away from a breath, why does its carapace undo whatever has been done.
\n 
\n 
\nCarol Alexander\u2019s third and most recent poetry collection is Fever and Bone<\/em> (Dos Madres Press, 2021). Her work appears in anthologies and literary magazines such as About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, Another Chicago Magazine, Caesura, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Delmarva Review, Denver Quarterly, Free State Review, Matter, Mobius, One, Pif, Potomac Review, Ruminate, San Pedro River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Stonecoast Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org, Third Wednesday, Verdad,<\/em> and The Westchester Review.<\/em> New work is forthcoming in RHINO, Gyroscope<\/em>, and elsewhere. With Stephen Massimilla, Alexander is co-editor of the award-winning anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (<\/em>Cave Moon Press, 2022).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Better than immigrant recipes because tastes lose their tribe. In this neighborhood few buy lard\u2014 heartstopper, scale-breaker\u2014   preferring the viscous, the transparent, cakes composed with olive oil, and so find a way to zest, bright crumbs on the tongue.   What she would possess came after Belarus: awkward marriage coarse sheet with an itchy [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[416],"class_list":["post-12649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-coupe-de-fruit-by-gauguin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12649"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12658,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12649\/revisions\/12658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}