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Sally Vogl

Spotlight: What I Brought Back / Freya at the Farmers’ Market / If an Egg Floats

August 21, 2016/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2016 / Sally Vogl

What I Brought Back
Peace Corps Lesotho, 1980-82

I brought images of a motorcycle, a tsetututu,
sputtering down pot-holed roads to a village

where men stuff mint in their nostrils,
women stretch their mouths in ululation,

boys extend legs in Bruce Lee moves,
and babies are secured on mothers’ backs

by blankets with airplane designs.
Also, images of volunteers, stumbling

to outhouses in morning’s wee hours,
holding torches, what we call flashlights,

already the smell of maguena, fried balls
of dough, drifting from local cafes

and smoke rising from dung fires.
I brought back a Botswanan basket

woven with dark grasses flowing between
light grasses, named Urine of the Zebra,

hardened lava, black and porous,
plucked from a trickling volcano,

photos of me running in a cosmos field,
the purple blossoms brushing my shoulders.

I also carried a vision of a future me,
with a baby in a front pack,

but didn’t know I’d call her Palesa,
the Sesotho word for flower.


Freya at the Farmers’ Market

Freya, her skin tanned the color of russets
in a nearby bin, greets me like an old friend,
the way she’s done since we met

at a yard sale years ago. Every time I’ve seen
her walking the streets—her wrists pulled low
from heavy bags—she’s worn layers

of pants and sweaters, matted hair framing
her face. Today, broccoli and carrots spill
over the top of her shopping bags in vibrant

green and orange. Notice how plump these are,
she says, fingering some Thompson raisins.
I nod, thinking how farmers groom fruits

and vegetables for this market, nurtured
with optimal sun, shade, and water.
The vender plops my acorn squash on a scale,

and Freya’s eyes follow the needle, tipping
to three pounds. If I gauged her age
from her weathered face, it would be close

to sixty—but her smile and the lilt in her voice
seem under forty. I wonder if she escapes
the sun’s rays and wonder where she sleeps

at night. Do you know of any jobs? she asks.
Sorry, I say, turning away to a booth
of grapefruit, a young blush on their skins.


If an Egg Floats

Floating can denote death, like fish belly up
or a human corpse. Or a bad egg—light
in weight and smelling pungent.

I pull eggs from a carton; faint blue text
indicates they expired twelve days ago.
Before beating them to make a soufflé,

a golden entrée that rises as if winged,
I use a water test to determine freshness—
the one I learned in the Peace Corps

thirty years ago when I lived without
refrigeration. Eggs laid by African chickens
had no expiration label, so I’d grab some

from my kitchen counter, lined up next
to the cheese and radiated milk, and pray
they’d sink in the water bowl. Today

in California, two eggs resembling
inverted white rockets—their plump ends
bobbing toward the water’s surface—

fail the exam. On their way to demise,
these eggs won’t puff up for a soufflé;
they won’t soar anywhere.


Sally VoglSally Vogl earned an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU-Fresno. Some of her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, damselfy press, The Hoot Review, and The Main Street Rag. She’s retired from a career teaching visually impaired students and now teaches poetry at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sally-Vogl_opt.jpg 400 300 Sally Vogl https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sally Vogl2016-08-21 23:08:572019-07-07 22:14:53Spotlight: What I Brought Back / Freya at the Farmers’ Market / If an Egg Floats

Amuse-Bouche Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

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

Today’s course:

Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

May 9, 2025/in Blog / Gale Naylor
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Products of Our Environment

March 14, 2025/in Blog / Mitko Grigorov
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Mother-to-Mother: An Open Letter about White Privilege and Fragility

November 22, 2024/in Blog / Dr. Valerie Nyberg
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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Dig Into Genre

May 23, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Lauren Howard
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The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

April 25, 2025/in Midnight Snack / paparouna
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On The Map

March 28, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Ariadne Will
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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

The managers of Lunch Ticket all agreed that issue 26 needed to have a theme, and that theme had a responsibility to call for work relating to what we are seeing in society. We wanted a theme that resonated with Antioch University MFA’s mission of advancing “racial, social, economic, disability, gender, and environmental justice,” and we felt it was time to take a stand…

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