My story is hewn in fishhooks and mealworms,
Stilted verbiage and archaic theme songs.
Transgressed and trampled--
Implicitly, illicitly,
Honed in twenty year time lapses--
Hidden in his Liberian beard.
A global odyssey is beginning--
Take away my old haunts gladly.
Lock me into your china cabinet--
Keep me there with the strongest of twine.
Collect the simplest adjectives--
Hoard them for future liabilities.
Host Like
Last night I heard you simmering
Downstairs, empty like radio static.
Maybe you were wondering
Who would hear your procedures.
The faucet flowed thickly over dishes,
Drowning the aroma of yesterday’s meals.
The apples sat on the table mealy
And brown. The sugar became liquid, simmering
On the stove. Tottering next to several dishes,
The crumble flattened as the evening static
Illumined the baking procedures.
I was always wondering
How it would rise, wondering
What the method was to the preparation of meals,
How to dissect your procedures.
It would always make me simmer
That I could not uncork you, a bubbling static
That sifts its way like flour into our dishes.
I would wish that you would dish
It up, serve it with some wonder,
And be sure to unmix the static.
A mix tape seasoning our meals
Now plays a solo simmer
Just as the tea kettle plays a tin procedure.
Now I peek down the staircase, afraid to procede
Seeing you beside those stacks of dishes
As the kettle continues to simmer
And I cannot stop but wonder
How you can let that sound peal, if a small meal
Can make you forget our personal static.
There is just so much distance in the static,
Our selves separated in distinct procedures,
Hosting those rituals that have become our meals.
I would bless those ecumenical dishes,
Call you monastic now as I wonder
If we will again together simmer.
We could still simmer statically, find out status
As we throw wonder into and out of our procedures
Making on those dishes a meal we could break together.
Bonnie MacAllister is active with the Women's Caucus for Art, Green Light Arts, and the Plastic Club (Philadelphia's historic art club). A playwright, she is the author of She Should Have Written It: A Story of Bohemian Surveillance (Shubin Theatre) and Crowning the May Queen (Philadelphia Fringe Festival). She has also published Written in Paste, Paid in Goats, Some Words Are No Longer Words, Women and Children of Ethiopia, and Coptic: Ethiopian Mysticism. She curates the collaborative multimedia magazine Certain Circuits (www.certaincircuits.org), and she has recently shown her visual artwork at the Delaware Art Museum (along with her husband Victor Thompson), the Center for Green Urbanism (DC), University of Pennsylvania, Montclair State University (NJ), Boricua College (NY), and Florissant Valley Art Gallery in St. Louis, MO. www.bonniemacallister.com
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