By Marcela Sulak
When I buy vegetables I prefer
to be in my country rather than yours
though in my country crescent moon carrots, radish hearts
are not so juicy and fancifully shaped.
But I prefer to find you in a place
your vocabulary carves a secret door
through which I can enter or escape.
Where syntax is not a floodlight on my blinded tongue
negotiating taxis at night.
I prefer to be here, where I don't have to lie,
to say I’m married and my man's
the jealous type. He's with the police,
and my father is the ambassador.
Here I am not a bare field in need of a flag.
Here the way I hold tomatoes, touch a cantaloupe
is just like all the others do
and it is your fingers which are different.
You don't watch me carry my purchases home.
I can stare back. And when I smile
it means whatever I want it to.
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Monday was a chore day -- laundry, bathrooms, and a Big Project for the month, details of which to be revealed later. We discovered that we had leftover pepper jack soup in the freezer, which we ate for lunch, and we walked to the beach in overcast but not at all cold weather, where today the geese and crows outnumbered the ducks and we saw only one eagle.
Cheryl and I watched the first three seasons of the new season of The Night Manager together, which I enjoyed a lot; so far it's less violent than the original, it feels acceptably Le Carré to me, and it has two women I like. Now we're watching more All Creatures Great and Small, which I am just as happy is back for another season. Impressionists at the Seattle Art Museum:
Under the Lamp by Marie Bracquemond
The Water Lily Pond by Claude Monet
Spring on West 78th Street, Childe Hassam
Apple Trees in Flower by Alfred Sisley
Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt by Mary Cassatt
Leon Delafosse by John Singer Sargent
The Chess Game by John Singer Sargent, through the glass case of a Louis Comfort Tiffany bowl
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