Marianne Szlyk

Thelma in Largo

She gives in
to the manager
(who is a flirt, by the way)
and orders the sweet potato fries.

She won’t outgrow
her new shoes,
the cobalt and black stilettos,
the nude pumps,
even the silver suede boots.

She settles in,
just fitting onto the stool, and
tosses her glossy hair
until she notices some men
watching.

Then she busies herself
cutting up the chicken
in her salad.

She adds
just a little dressing.

The girl refills her soda.
Or is it pop?
Co-cola?  Coke?

Thelma gives in
and orders
a slice of lemon pie.

She gives in.

Originally published in Aberration Labyrinth

The Nurses Welcome My Father Home

For him, though, that is Worcester,
city of single-serving Table Talk pies
bought at my cousin’s grocery store;
city of coffee ice cream, of scrambled eggs
with kielbasa served at the all-night diner
downtown, served with a can of Moxie;

city of old factories where friends’ parents worked
turned into cannabis dispensaries, shops
that sell hemp clothing; city of pharmacies
turned into vape shops and sushi bars;

city of old schools that look like factories,
coal-soaked stone hulking on the hillside;
city of dirt roads, rough trails retreating
into groves of ailanthus, boxy houses,
and boulders twice their size;

city of the paper he still reads,
amid the politics, looking for funny stories
about marijuana-infused ice cream
available in tomato sorbet or squash
or the wedding at Northboro’s cemetery
where only the minister wore a mask;

city of the accent he is losing
as the nurses welcome him home.


Originally published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly

 

 

Ritz Cracker Pie

One Sunday afternoon in 1960 my father saved us from Aunt Moo’s mock-apple pie. Made with margarine, Realemon juice, cinnamon, sugar, and Ritz crackers, served with Cracker Barrel cheese, it wasn’t a bad pie.  It was probably a good pie.  It was even homemade.  It just wasn’t an apple pie.

Sixty-two years later, I find it hard to believe that the Victory Supermarket on North Main Street had run out of apples.  This fruit was grown all over New England before ranches, split-levels, malls, and McMansions took over.  Perhaps the pie was a trick to test my father, the young dentist with a crewcut and a convertible.  Or the pie was my aunt’s specialty, served at canasta parties and picnics by the lake, the mid-century equivalent of your kiwi cheesecake or my coffee brownies made from a mix. Or a sign that my father would be invited to the next picnic on the shores of Lake Whalom.

If Dad hadn’t discerned that the pie’s apples were really crackers fresh from the box, would Aunt Moo have brought the pie every blessed Thanksgiving throughout the Seventies?  I wince, picturing my brother and mother picking at their slices of pie while Dad and I hide ours in French vanilla ice cream from Friendly’s.  We might have had more Thanksgivings with my father’s side of the family where my aunt Irene served the mashed potatoes made with skim milk from a gigantic aluminum pot and my uncle’s girlfriend brought key lime pie and, for the younger adults, grasshopper pie.

Would I even be here if Dad had not passed the test?

Originally published in Setu: Food Issue.