The Hungry Ear (15 page)
Authors: Kevin Young
and vanish by day,
yet burn there
in blue or above
quilts of cloud.
There is no savor
more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be
what, woman,
and who, myself,
I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.
Sweet Summer
Do I dare to eat a peach?
âT. S. ELIOT
I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat
anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread
.
âBILL COSBY
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for youth, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just
paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the
Polish Rider
occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the
Nude Descending a Staircase
or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I'm telling you about it
Letters to Wendy's
JULY 3, 1996
Today I bought a small Frosty. This may not seem
significant, but the fact is: I'm lactose intolerant. Purchasing
a small Frosty, then, is no different than hiring someone to
beat me. No different in essence. The only difference,
which may or may not be essential, is that, during my
torture, I am gazing upon your beautiful employees.
JULY 6, 1996
I was so high on Sudafed and whiskey today that I couldn't
eat. I got a Cokeâactually five Cokes, as I could refill for
free. It's times like thisâdehydrated, exhausted, unable to
imagine homeâthat your plastic seats, your quiet
understandable room, set beside but not quite overlooking
the source of real value, offer me a tragedy small enough to
want to endure.
AUGUST 19, 1996
Today I was thinking that it might be nice to be able, in
one's last days, to move into a Wendy's. Perhaps a Wendy's
life-support system could even be created and given a
Wendy's slant; liquid fries, for instance, and burgers and
Frosties continually dripped into one's vegetable dream
locus. It would intensify the visits of the well, too, to see
that such a care is being taken for their destiny.
NOVEMBER 16, 1996
It's good, this not knowing anyone's name. The employees
have name-tags, but no one believes them. Their anonymity
is far too obvious. How monstrous to introduce oneself to
one's register person! How useless, how wearying, that
information is! Only the shouted names of children make
sense here, denoting not a person but a drifting off, a
subversive fascination.
FEBRUARY 14, 1997
It has taken me this long to confess that I am not a fan of
the salad bar. That is, to
openly
confess it. Surely my silence
on the matter has created an impression already. I suppose
I've been ashamed to speak. I have this sense that in
speaking I will be led to something embarrassing, something
at odds with the uniquely liberal persona I prance about in.
This, though, this letter, is a good first step.
JULY 9, 1997
I'm so sorry for everything I've said. I'd take it back if I
could. I am willing to admit that, in some sense, these
descriptions of my visits have obscured the sufficiency of
the meals I've had. I will not admit, however, that sufficiency
is something I could be reasonably expected to live with.
That is, I am truly sorry, but an insufficient meal
is
available, and nothing else tastes as sweet.
Consider the human capacity for suffering,
our insatiable appetite for woe.
I do not say this lightly
but the sandwiches at Subway
suck. Foaming lettuce,
mayo like rancid bear grease,
meat the color of a dead dog's tongue.
Yet they are consumed
by the millions
and by the tens of millions.
So much for the food. The rest
I must pass over in silence.
In a side booth at MacDonald's before your music class
you go up and down in your seat like an arpeggio
under the poster of the talking hamburger:
two white eyes rolling around in the top bun, the thin
patty of beef imitating the tongue of its animal nature.
You eat merrily. I watch the Oakland mommies,
trying to understand what it means to be “single.”
Across from us, females of all ages surround the birthday girl.
Her pale lace and insufficient being
can't keep them out of her circle.
Stripes of yellow and brown all over the place.
The poor in spirit have started to arrive,
the one with thick midwestern braids twisted like thought
on her head; usually she brings her mother.
This week, no mother. She mouths her words anyway
across the table, space-mama, time-mama,
mama who should be there.
Families in line: imagine all this
translated by the cry of time moving through us,
this place a rubble. The gardens new generations
will plant in this spot, and the food will go on
in another order. This thought cheers me immensely.
That we will be here together, you still seven,
bending over the crops pretending to be royalty,
that the huge woman with one blind eye
and dots like eyes all over her dress
will also be there, eating with pleasure
as she eats now, right up to the tissue paper,
peeling it back like bright exotic petals.
Last year, on the sun-spilled deck in Marin
we ate grapes with the Russians;
the KGB man fingered them quickly and dutifully,
then, in a sad tone to us
“We must not eat them so fast,
we wait in line so long for these,” he said.
The sight of food going into a woman's mouth
made Byron sick. Food is a metaphor for existence.
When Mr. Egotistical Sublime, eating the pasta,
poked one finger into his mouth, he made a sound.
For some, the curve of the bell pepper
seems sensual but it can worry you,
the slightly greasy feel of it.
The place I went with your father had an apartment to the left, and in the window, twisted like a huge bowtie,
an old print bedspread. One day, when I looked over,
someone was watching us, a young girl.
The waiter had just brought the first thing:
an orange with an avocado sliced up CCCC
in an oil of forceful herbs. I couldn't eat it.
The girl's face stood for something
and from it, a little mindless daylight was reflected.
The businessmen at the next table
were getting off on each other and the young chardonnay.
Their briefcases leaned against their ankles.
I watched the young girl's face because for an instant
I had seen your face there,
unterrified, unhungry, and a little disdainful.
Then the waiter brought the food,
bands of black seared into it like the memory of a cage.
