Blind Date with Salmon and Cultural Differences
He buys me an avocado salad and a salmon skewer
eyes my skewer
takes some
even though it’s cooked to death—
death as an appetite spoiler: the death of Aristotle,
his 16-years old cat when it tried to follow his car,
as he was leaving, after dumping it at a farm.
“Toronto apartments are too small for crude instincts!”
he shrugs.
He gulps the humid air praising form over content.
Yes, he knows who Aristotle is: “Catharsis as
collateral damage of rhetoric.”
He likes philosophy and reads Hegel—
in pieces, the Reader’s Digest-version
with Chinese take-out and Italian wine—
he’s pro multiculturalism and immigration.
“Nietzsche? The guy who killed God? I didn’t try it.”
I chuckle, imagining Nietzsche and him—
two beached herrings, quarrelling about religion.
“No way! You can write in English?”
He also writes poems but only on paper napkins—
like a true artist seized by his muse in odd places.
Ignored, cubes of watermelon shrink on his greens
like pieces of flesh on a summer battlefield.
He’s finished my salmon and stretches his legs under the table,
touching mine.
“Romania?! Wow! Are you gypsy? That’s a pity. They’re
so interesting. Did you go to gypsy foretellers? Why, not?”
He extends towards my boobs crooked fingers
with calluses and nicotine stains, pretending
he doesn’t understand “No” because of my foreign accent.
_____
Immigrant Women’s Eyes: A Group Photo Exhibit
Look us in the eyes—
we’ve walled-up the gallery with their close-ups:
………….Laughing eyes and eyes laughing at themselves,
………….half-closed at midnight, half-open at 6 a.m. rushing for
………….the bus on the way to English classes for beginners
………….before the shift at the grocery store.
………….An allergic wink-wink during the wildfire haze
………….that some took as the embodiment of arrogance
………….and the mockery of gratitude.
………….The eyes of longing, thousands of ommatidia pointed
………….here and there—
………….the newly familiar overlapping distant birthplaces
………….in a life-long dissolve.
………….Eyes with eyelids in all skin shades and makeup
………….matching each of the births, weddings, funerals
………….we’ve missed because of overpriced flight tickets or
………….in absentia prison sentences waiting for us at the border.
………….Eyes blackened with the blessing of gods
………….who anathematize women daring to be different
………….and decline learning foreign languages.
………….“No, we’ve never repented. We didn’t get it.”
………….Eyes covered with blindfolds by pretend do-gooders
………….“Hide and seek! Hide who you are and seek
………….Western masks that fit your complexions!”
Look us in the eyes and see.
_____
The Military Peacekeeper ’s Son
Papa gasped (heart attack!) and died, mumbling
“Butterflies… beware of the butterflies.”
Between the funeral and mama’s suicide attempt during the wake,
the son forgot about dad’s last words until now,
10 years, 2 months, 3 hours, 5 minutes, seconds are irrelevant)—
A military truck mistakenly led by its GPA on
the cobblestone-covered narrow street in the suburbs,
windows shake, walls wave, the combat boots’ shoebox
covered in dust and dead moths slips off the top of the kitchen cabinet,
spilling on the floor six packs of hand-written lined paper,
papa’s diary carefully rolled in soldier socks
with holes in the soles and the fragrance of trench feet.
The young man grabs a grapefruit-flavoured beer
and starts reading, hoping for pulp fiction:
Papa’s favourite song on his first tour storming Iraq to quiet
the dessert storm—“Let the bodies hit the floor…”
Papa’s official record and unofficial list of friendly fires,
including a seven-year-old boy who was eating a Snickers bar
(a gift from another American soldier) in the wrong bush
at the wrong time.
Papa’s papers for being discharged from active duty
(without neither a medal nor a retirement party)
because he kept seeing blood-sucking butterflies
surrounding him every time his M16 rifle jammed in the field—
“Failure to extract,” the unforeseeable result of
the cheaper gunpowder purchased by the army on a smaller budget.
When the ambulance arrives, the peacekeeper’s son still screams—
“Butterflies! Blood-sucking butterflies! Save me from the butterflies!”
A swarm of Cabbage White butterflies trails him onto the ambulance,
circling his forehead.
_____
BIO
Born in Romania, I immigrated over twenty years ago, and now I proudly identify myself as a hyphenated Romanian-Canadian scholar, writer, and literary translator. Holding a PhD from the University of Toronto, I have been teaching at universities in Canada since 2006, including four courses in Creative Writing: Poetry (2016, 2019, 2020) at the University of Guelph.
The winner of the 2020 Very Small Verse Contest of the League of Canadian Poets, my recent poetry has been featured in the English originals and/or in translation in magazines in the UK, the US, Belarus, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Albania, China, Romania, and Canada. I have also translated or co-translated seven poetry collections and co-earned second prize in the 2018 John Dryden Translation Competition in the UK. My seventh poetry book, Praying to a Landed-Immigrant God, is forthcoming from Grey Borders Books.
wonderful, amazing poetry-Congratulations !