i.
\n<\/strong>His mother
\nwas an aficionada<\/p>\nof rinsed
\nand reused
\nStyrofoam.<\/p>\n
Were you to go hungry at night
\nit wasn\u2019t
\non her watch \u2014<\/p>\n
oatmeal in the meatloaf,
\na hunk of government cheese,
\nsome dough
\nfried over the stove.<\/p>\n
At the picnic
\nyears of abundance later
\nhe finished his cabbage roll,
\nset his paper plate on the table,
\nand,
\nplastic fork in hand,
\nstabbed
\ntiny holes
\nthrough the Chinet \u2014
\na pattern
\nof a flower.<\/p>\n
What are you doing?<\/em>
\nasked his wife,
\nmarried in
\nfrom the good side of town.<\/p>\nYou<\/em>
\nshould do it, too,
\n<\/em>he tells her<\/p>\nor she\u2019ll wash them all<\/em>
\nand use them tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\nii.
\n<\/strong>That night
\nshe stood watch
\nas he went for the closets,
\nreaching deep into her hiding places
\nlaughing \u2014
\nSweet Lord,<\/em>
\nhow long have you had<\/em>
\nthis?<\/em> \u2014
\nholding out another
\nthen another
\nof her treasures,
\ndaughter-in-law
\nsilently egging him on.<\/p>\nEach thing they threw into the trash pile
\nshe remembered
\nsaving for good,
\nsaving against want,
\na little something
\nput away
\njust in case.<\/p>\n
As the sun set,
\nhe hauled six trash bags \u2014
\nbrittle wrapping paper,
\ntinfoil smoothed flat,
\nnapkins from the bakery \u2014
\nout to the garage.<\/p>\n
And that night,
\nas everyone slept but her,
\nshe crept out to the garage
\nand saved it all again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kolaya<\/span> is the author of the novel\u00a0<\/em>Charmed Particles\u00a0and two books of poems,\u00a0<\/em>Any Anxious Body and\u00a0<\/em>Other Possible Lives. She\u2019s an assistant professor of English and teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½. You can learn more about her work at chrissykolaya.com<\/em><\/p>\n
\nReading Terminal Market<\/h2>\nBy Tammy Komoff<\/h3>\nCreative writing MFA student<\/em><\/h4>\nAllow me to paint a picture \u2014 crowded narrow walkways between dark wooden food stalls. A sizzle and steam as short-order cooks saut\u00e9 vegetables for customers in black puffer jackets. Fishmongers purge their displays, sloshing melted ice <\/span>into sinks. And there, in the middle of the din, bright white and blue, is Olympus Gyro, a Greek lunch counter. It\u2019s like the Isle of Santorini has been dropped into a muddy puddle.<\/p>\nThe ghost of my father shaves lamb from a spit behind the counter. It\u2019s not really him. I know that, but I\u2019ve seen glimpses of him everywhere in the weeks since his death. This specter pulls me forward. I slide onto a leather stool and watch his busy hands make six dishes simultaneously. He spares me a quick smile, magically producing a menu and sliding it my way. My father did this job. Grandfather did too. That\u2019s what Greeks did if they were lucky enough to escape the Turkish Genocide and make it here, open bars and restaurants.<\/p>\n
I order spanakopita, spinach and feta between buttery phyllo dough. It should be crispy. It should crumble and flake down my sweater as I eat, but this has been cold and reheated. It\u2019s mushy, like grandma\u2019s. And suddenly I\u2019m 6 again and sitting on Daddy\u2019s lap eating last night\u2019s leftovers. While he and Grandma, and her sisters, Teta Luba, Teta Pandora, laugh and lie and cheat at poker in a creole blend of English and Greek. The ghosts surround me, and for the length of lunch, I am home again, in a place and with people lost to time. I feel their love.<\/p>\n
But the ghosts dissolve as I finish my meal. In a moment, I do as well, slipping into the dark-coated crowd. Olympus Gyro standing a bright beacon behind me.<\/p>\n
\nLive Maine Lobsters<\/h2>\nBy David Gibson \u201921MFA<\/strong><\/h3>\nCreative writing alum<\/em><\/h4>\nIn case you were wondering, I still have the lobsters \u2014 the ones I ordered for a romantic dinner from the back of The New Yorker<\/em>, from back when we were dating. They came wrapped in seaweed and the Portland Press Herald<\/em>, in a heavy brown box that said “Live Maine Lobsters” on the side, a box dented and dandruffed with wax.<\/p>\nI told you about them in the hospital, the Live Maine Lobsters, which I had meant as a surprise, and I apologized that I wouldn’t be able to steam them up with drawn butter and chewy French bread, and in the spaces between the morphine and the physical therapy and the uncomfortably erotic catheterizations, I told you that they were probably dying on my doorstep even then, tilted into the crusty snow eight thousand feet above the ocean waves.<\/p>\n
I was there for a week, a week of pain waking me, of doctors putting me under. I knew you were there, three days and nights on that shiny green foldout, and then I knew that you weren’t for five days and nights more, but I thank you for driving me home \u2014 a prickly package of bandages and Percocet, four fractured vertebrae and a hematoma that swelled out of my lumbar like a purple-green parody of pregnancy. You said goodbye with a kiss I could not lean in for, and I kicked the cardboard coffin onto the carpet inside.<\/p>\n
In time, though, the Live Maine Lobsters revived, and began clacking over the linoleum beside the dishwasher, and curling up on the carpet under the coffee table, skittering to the shower when they heard the water run. I snipped away their rubber manacles and let them live off the crumbs that fell around my electric-lift recliner, crusts of cold pizza and ham-and-cheese sandwiches and chicken pot pies. At night, their antennae gave cold caresses to feet slick in compression hose and black from where the blood had pooled, until I pushed them away with the crook of my cane.<\/p>\n
They grew until they were the size of corgis. They knocked over lamps, and chewed up area rugs, made soggy nests of magazines behind the cushions of the sofa, so I moved them to the basement, which had always been damp anyway.<\/p>\n
I am married now, and we have three children. Sometimes after dinner when we’re watching TV, they ask me what’s in the basement, and I smile and say, “Daddy things,” and they go back to their iPads. I double-check the knob on my way to the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Some nights, when I know they are asleep, I roll up my pants and take the first two stairs into the basement, and I let the gray-green water lap over my feet. I toss in the mojo-spiced carcasses of rotisserie chickens and frozen packages of country-style ribs, and I watch their great shadows glide to where the bones sink. They are bigger now, massive even, large like sedans left to rust in the bottom of an abandoned quarry.<\/p>\n
Some nights, like tonight, I take off my clothes and hang them on the handrail below the light switch, and I inch myself off the landing. I float with my face to the moldy ceiling, bobbing in the waves that the Live Maine Lobsters carve in their basement abyss. I hear the clacking of their claws, feel their antennae \u2014 hollow as reeds \u2014 on my legs, my feet, my once-broken back.<\/p>\n
The water is deep, and it is dark, and it is so very, very cold.<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23231,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[341,1452],"class_list":["post-23061","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-college-of-arts-and-humanities","tag-ucf-alumni","issues-1575","issues-fall-2022"],"yoast_head":"\nCulinary Inspiration: Food-themed Creative Works from Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½ Writers<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n