Nina Romano earned an M.A. from Adelphi University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks from Flutter Press: Prayer in a Summer of Grace, and Time’s Mirrored Illusion, and four poetry collections: Cooking Lessons from Rock Press, submitted for the Pulitzer Prize, Coffeehouse Meditations, from Kitsune Books, She Wouldn’t Sing at My Wedding, from Bridle Path Press, and Faraway Confections from Aldrich Press. Romano has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. She co-authored Writing in a Changing World. Her debut short story collection, The Other Side of the Gates, has just been published from Bridle Path Press. More about the author at: www.ninaromano.com
A Late Fall Day
Blustery snow
flurries.
The heat of the
truck too intense,
too much
suffocating air.
I crack open
the window—
too much frigid
air.
In the parking
lot,
I dash across
frozen mud
into a steam
bath bar,
with swinging
doors,
reminding me of
the old west saloons.
I strip off my
rabbit fur jacket,
approach the
bar laden with eggs
in a jar,
dried, packaged pepperoni sticks,
stale peanuts
and pretzels in tiny-sized
enamel buckets.
All of the
locals all lined up in a row--
scuzzy old men,
some drifters.
They look at
me,
swig and
swallow hard
from their
bottles of beer:
Polygamy
Porter, Squatters,
Wasatch
Devastator.
I sit two bar
stools down
from a young
bearded Christ
and order a
whiskey neat,
with a Cockeyed
Cooper chaser.
When I walk out
to see the
fading light
settle dusk
upon the
Wasatch Mountains,
I wish I’d been
an artist
to thrust upon
my canvas
this flange of
black rock,
and these naked
trees
bearing the weight
of this first
snowfall.
Appears in Time's Mirrored Illusion (my chapbook)
Making Veal Stew
I dredge the meat in seasoned flour,
sauté in olive oil, a dab of pure Irish
butter.
As the chunks golden, I cut, slice and dice
vegetables for veal stew: sunny Yukon Gold
potatoes,
tarnished sweet potatoes, auburn carrots,
pearl white leeks
with emerald tops, ashy onions, and these I toss
into the pot with the browning nubs, then
splashing all, baptize
with Coeur de Terre Pinot Grigio, or if we’re
drinking red—
a Pinot Noir, from the Willamette Valley in
Dundee Hills
where Oregon mimics Tuscany’s rolling hills
exactly like the wheat fields, the vineyards.
In early June we visited these wineries:
Penner-Ash, Tristaetum,
and Domaine Serene—a light misting rain
making mud
runnels through the estates, a sense of
sorrow hovering in air
except for the boisterous bounty of
multicolored, blossoming roses.
I recall the Arno, how it looked in
springtime; the slopes, mounts
and inclines—valleys near Florence, lunching
in a little country
restaurant with ancient wooden beams, seeming
old as the river itself.
We ate fagioli
al fiasco seasoned laurel in rustic ceramic bowls
with thick-sliced homemade bread toasted into
bruschetta,
drowned in green-gold olive oil and smothered
with garlic I taste still.
Whenever I cook, the dreamlike tactile
kitchen undertakings
instigate a kind of first class mind travel—
no tedium, no task too trivial, in fact, no
task at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment