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Marzipan

November 15, 2012/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2013 / by Susan Grimm

Only one chocolate cake in all the land. Only this one Sunday. There was some startling
blue. White caps. Only at this window where the loch lives leaping in its song.

Minutes before, sheep turds. I have a blue plaid wool coat. Father in a suit. Mother in
navy or beige. Forty more years until they falter. Raw grown children of immigrants,
farmers knitting up their concoctions of home. (If a man can bend a spoon with his brain.)

We didn’t get older those weeks of marzipan and sugar-dipped fruit. The grapes spitting
in their dulled and yellow coats. Living in a hotel every night. With manners. The fish
with their difficult bones.

Without looking, I know that you are there. The slide tray clicks. The waiters in their red
coats hiding their fifteen-year old grins.

*                                  *                                  *

Far from the medicine cabinet of home. Such a hopeful box. There is no slide of this.
Iodine. Eye-cup. Mercurochrome. Any wound could be painted away.

Telling my rosary beads in the almond paste of clouds. That long ago. The fingerprints of
the waves. The whorls shuddering.

In the coke-fueled fogs of Europe, the chilly Glaswegian streets. Marzipan. What kind of
tasting is this—as if tongued through wax paper. In the shape of a fruit. In the shape of a
pig.

We have found March bread. Looked through its marchpane. We will break it together.
Mortal or vegetable. Hitting any of the taste-buds sideways.

*                      *                      *                      *

The air train shrieks. Suitcases roll. Long corridors of fast food and bad books. We all
think soon—the wheels should lift with our longing. (If a man can bend a spoon.)

Skating along, one hand on the rail of the accelerated walk. A dog on a leash. Two figures
on crutches. This cartoon doesn’t warn enough.

Metallic glandular flux. Can we scrape fear from our mouths. Maybe a rinse with the eye-
cup. The planes trailing their dotted lines.

Outside, it’s dark. Chocolate heavy on the tongue. Spit and his brother (ungathered) leap,
put through a sieve. This could be a slide slipped into the tray. Is this with or without the
moon, lickety-split, fisted, in the shape of the sun, stroll-jaunting away.

Susan Grimm is the author of the collection Lake Erie Blue and chapbooks Almost Home and Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue, with poems in Poetry East, West Branch and The Journal. She has received Copper Nickel Poetry and Hayden Carruth Poetry prizes and an Ohio Arts Council fellowship.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 AudreyM https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png AudreyM2012-11-15 18:19:042019-05-19 12:18:01Marzipan

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
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The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
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From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Point Break & Top Gun Are More Than Homoerotic Action Movies

March 3, 2023/in Midnight Snack / Michaela Emerson
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Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/JLR.jpeg 1204 1042 Jemma Leigh Roe https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Jemma Leigh Roe2023-03-17 11:55:192023-03-15 10:14:41On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
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Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
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School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

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