Lori Levy
Japanese Eggplant on Matza
For Marlon, Nao, and Peggy
Is this the taste of diversity? On my birthday
I eat Mexican cheese, Queso Fresco, topped with Japanese
eggplant that Nao, my son's Japanese girlfriend,
makes for me with miso paste and sugar. I spread the mix
on matza left over from Passover. Salty, sweet, soft, crunchy.
I open my mouth wide, want more.
Want this flavor in my home. Want to sit down with diversity,
see it circling my table, blending with my Jewish/non-Jewish family,
as when Marlon, my daughter's African American friend,
joins us for Passover this year and takes a turn reading
from the Haggadah. He tells us about a music festival in Scotland
where he hid in his hotel room the first few days
to escape fingers pointed at him, hostile stares, threats
of violence—though, later, when the same people heard him sing
in a musical, they embraced him. Greeted him in the street,
talking, bantering, caught off guard when he knocked them out
with his humor. Marlon eats matza, haroset, bitter herbs,
shares his stories, his Egypt, makes us cringe, makes us laugh.
We place our hands on each other's shoulders,
sway side to side, sing the Passover songs.
Religion, race, nationality. Divisive. Not our identity, says Peggy,
my 98-year-old friend. Strip us all down and look inside.
That's who we are. No Passover for Peggy—but on Valentine's Day,
the only holiday she and her husband celebrate,
they write love poems to each other and read them over candlelight.
Is this who we are? Smiles across a white tablecloth, over dinner, wine.
The I who's a love poem. Sometimes a tragedy. Who thinks, feels,
suffers. Who chooses, at one moment or another, to celebrate,
as I do now: I celebrate color and spice, handed-down rituals. What shapes
and defines us. What we bring to the table—knowing, believing,
I am not my matza, Nao is not her eggplant. I am Marlon, Marlon is me.
Like a Dimple
I know it’s delicious, but, please,
don't tell me now. Don’t even whisper
about the meat and mushrooms you're stirring in that pot.
Later—another day? another hour?—I will swoon at your seasonings,
fall in love with garlic and wine, the wooden spoon, your hand,
but right now, this moment, I want to talk about lavender--
how it shrubs along our wall, purples and perfumes, till ahhh
overwhelms and I rush to gather all I can. I want to mash it
in my clothes, fill a tub with armloads of its fragrance and float
in water spiked with flowers—though, truthfully, I don't need a lot:
a scrawny sprig is enough to press to my nostrils,
inhaling, crazying, till my sighs turn to gold
and I feel rich as a woman fulfilled.
Lavender woos and wins every time, persisting
till I declare it the color of my life
and find myself asking, begging you, to tear off this roof
of black slate shingles. Give me mud and straw,
a hut with a roof thatched loosely enough
to leave cracks for the sky to slit through, so I can lie in bed
and eye-swallow blue. Come, look,
I’ll pull some down for you, streams, waterfalls
of blue. I will mix it with lavender,
knead it into dough with cinnamon and nutmeg.
What? I think your ears are turning purple as I speak,
and now, as you lean close, I’m sure I smell it in the crease
of your neck. Just a trace, but too dizzying to ignore,
suggestive as a dimple that hints at something bubbling
and ready to erupt. Is that your sauce, still simmering
on the flame? Suddenly I’m ravenous,
can’t wait another minute for your stew.
Not a Hollywood Movie
We talk about love.
Sometimes I love you more, sometimes less, he says.
I feel the same way.
Think spectrum, range, hot warm cold
as in water from a faucet, the flow increasing, decreasing,
the temperature not always perfect, but good enough.
Or we could say it’s a matter of orange juice, eggplant . . .
He is groggy in the morning. I wake up renewed and ready for the day.
Ready, first thing, to squeeze oranges for him.
He can’t begin, doesn’t want to begin,
without a glass of fresh juice
brought to him in bed. A simple act for me.
For him, a big ahh, quenching, invigorating.
I don’t have patience to fry eggplants for dinner.
He does. He stands by the stove, tender with the slices,
spicing them exactly right, turning them exactly on time.
I devour the eggplant, stuff the browned slices into pita bread
with cheese or eggs, tomatoes, hummus. With anything, everything.
Some moments we meld—grateful
to be living this life together.
Other times we argue like kids.
I tell him his way is mood-based, head in the sand, slow.
He says I have no priorities:
everything is important, demands attention.
Sometimes you can’t stand me, right? he asks.
We laugh. This, too, is true.
Still, he craves my orange juice, I could die for his eggplant.
Hunger. Thirst. We could call it love.
Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Confrontation, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Her work has also been published in medical humanities journals and read on BBC Radio 4. She and her family live in Los Angeles.
For Marlon, Nao, and Peggy
Is this the taste of diversity? On my birthday
I eat Mexican cheese, Queso Fresco, topped with Japanese
eggplant that Nao, my son's Japanese girlfriend,
makes for me with miso paste and sugar. I spread the mix
on matza left over from Passover. Salty, sweet, soft, crunchy.
I open my mouth wide, want more.
Want this flavor in my home. Want to sit down with diversity,
see it circling my table, blending with my Jewish/non-Jewish family,
as when Marlon, my daughter's African American friend,
joins us for Passover this year and takes a turn reading
from the Haggadah. He tells us about a music festival in Scotland
where he hid in his hotel room the first few days
to escape fingers pointed at him, hostile stares, threats
of violence—though, later, when the same people heard him sing
in a musical, they embraced him. Greeted him in the street,
talking, bantering, caught off guard when he knocked them out
with his humor. Marlon eats matza, haroset, bitter herbs,
shares his stories, his Egypt, makes us cringe, makes us laugh.
We place our hands on each other's shoulders,
sway side to side, sing the Passover songs.
Religion, race, nationality. Divisive. Not our identity, says Peggy,
my 98-year-old friend. Strip us all down and look inside.
That's who we are. No Passover for Peggy—but on Valentine's Day,
the only holiday she and her husband celebrate,
they write love poems to each other and read them over candlelight.
Is this who we are? Smiles across a white tablecloth, over dinner, wine.
The I who's a love poem. Sometimes a tragedy. Who thinks, feels,
suffers. Who chooses, at one moment or another, to celebrate,
as I do now: I celebrate color and spice, handed-down rituals. What shapes
and defines us. What we bring to the table—knowing, believing,
I am not my matza, Nao is not her eggplant. I am Marlon, Marlon is me.
Like a Dimple
I know it’s delicious, but, please,
don't tell me now. Don’t even whisper
about the meat and mushrooms you're stirring in that pot.
Later—another day? another hour?—I will swoon at your seasonings,
fall in love with garlic and wine, the wooden spoon, your hand,
but right now, this moment, I want to talk about lavender--
how it shrubs along our wall, purples and perfumes, till ahhh
overwhelms and I rush to gather all I can. I want to mash it
in my clothes, fill a tub with armloads of its fragrance and float
in water spiked with flowers—though, truthfully, I don't need a lot:
a scrawny sprig is enough to press to my nostrils,
inhaling, crazying, till my sighs turn to gold
and I feel rich as a woman fulfilled.
Lavender woos and wins every time, persisting
till I declare it the color of my life
and find myself asking, begging you, to tear off this roof
of black slate shingles. Give me mud and straw,
a hut with a roof thatched loosely enough
to leave cracks for the sky to slit through, so I can lie in bed
and eye-swallow blue. Come, look,
I’ll pull some down for you, streams, waterfalls
of blue. I will mix it with lavender,
knead it into dough with cinnamon and nutmeg.
What? I think your ears are turning purple as I speak,
and now, as you lean close, I’m sure I smell it in the crease
of your neck. Just a trace, but too dizzying to ignore,
suggestive as a dimple that hints at something bubbling
and ready to erupt. Is that your sauce, still simmering
on the flame? Suddenly I’m ravenous,
can’t wait another minute for your stew.
Not a Hollywood Movie
We talk about love.
Sometimes I love you more, sometimes less, he says.
I feel the same way.
Think spectrum, range, hot warm cold
as in water from a faucet, the flow increasing, decreasing,
the temperature not always perfect, but good enough.
Or we could say it’s a matter of orange juice, eggplant . . .
He is groggy in the morning. I wake up renewed and ready for the day.
Ready, first thing, to squeeze oranges for him.
He can’t begin, doesn’t want to begin,
without a glass of fresh juice
brought to him in bed. A simple act for me.
For him, a big ahh, quenching, invigorating.
I don’t have patience to fry eggplants for dinner.
He does. He stands by the stove, tender with the slices,
spicing them exactly right, turning them exactly on time.
I devour the eggplant, stuff the browned slices into pita bread
with cheese or eggs, tomatoes, hummus. With anything, everything.
Some moments we meld—grateful
to be living this life together.
Other times we argue like kids.
I tell him his way is mood-based, head in the sand, slow.
He says I have no priorities:
everything is important, demands attention.
Sometimes you can’t stand me, right? he asks.
We laugh. This, too, is true.
Still, he craves my orange juice, I could die for his eggplant.
Hunger. Thirst. We could call it love.
Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Confrontation, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel. Her work has also been published in medical humanities journals and read on BBC Radio 4. She and her family live in Los Angeles.