Bon Appétit!
editor's note
Celebrations
Meals are also a celebration of life and of relationships. A wedding feast. A couple on their first date, sharing a meal. A family gathered around a holiday meal. Preadolescent girls eating brownies while playing truth or dare at a sleepover. A church congregation celebrating the sacrament of communion.
interviews
Trish Ryan
The moment that stands out in my memory is a job interview, where the executive I met with said something to the effect of, “You’re not at all qualified for this job, but your resume is so unusual that I just wanted to meet you…”
poetry
Nervous Stomach
Diagnosis is
like shooting
at stars.
Life settles never.
Nourish My Tongue
like shooting
at stars.
Life settles never.
A bowl of dried cherry ice cream, tiny metal spoon
and they chatter in Spanish about my stomach,
when I was little, and when I ate only seeds, like a sparrow.
A Passion For French
and they chatter in Spanish about my stomach,
when I was little, and when I ate only seeds, like a sparrow.
I loved you, but I was spitting gravel
from my mouth, not French.
Rope
from my mouth, not French.
And on some unknown day
man created rope
and it was good to pull.
Culinary Timeline
man created rope
and it was good to pull.
Soda pop crackles
yellow and green and empty
again, but no more on the inside,
where bubbles swim and swallow.
Pillow Talk
yellow and green and empty
again, but no more on the inside,
where bubbles swim and swallow.
When my Bronxtime, long ago, far away
invites me for a visit, my thoughts stray
to Cypress Avenue.
Journey
invites me for a visit, my thoughts stray
to Cypress Avenue.
how far I travel
on your highways
mutilated stranger,
distant as stars.
on your highways
mutilated stranger,
distant as stars.
fiction
Effects
Amaria Winter kept a patisserie. Or it kept her. It was a family business, handed down from generation to generation so that the recipes grew and were modified and perfected to the point where people would travel far to taste the caramel pastries, double chocolate raisin buns, custom filled pancakes, gateau crème-de-la-mare, marshmallow soufflé, fairy cakes, Nepalese buns and twisted sesame bread.
The Last Supper
Before the sun shyly peeped over Trujillo, warming the city by degrees, when everything was still gray and chill, Camilla was up. She fed the cats, wondering if she would make it through the day. It would be a performance, to be sure, but she and her sister Julia had agreed on one thing and that was that Mama could never know.
Missing
In her kitchen, the floor is hardwood, and stained black. She sits on a stool at the table, ankles crossed, just the tips of her toes on the floor, and reads an old newspaper, already dog-eared and stained brown and black with unknown liquids.
Paisan's Pizzeria
To a new business owner, there is no time more exciting and frightening than opening night. This was especially so for Tony Datillo, a man who learned to cook at his mother’s side while in grade school, and whose diction and physique resembled the typical Italian chef seen in many New York City pizzerias.
Sweet Love
The accounting office Angela Cumberland worked in had umpteen dozens of desks, well plotted like equidistant limitless rows of corn in an Indiana field. Each one was identical, and as Angela's desk was in the top right hand corner, only Elena Schmidt who sat to the left conversed with her at lunch or for a few moments before or after work. Thus, it was a surprise to Angela to find a blue post-it note and a package of Hostess Ho-Hos on her otherwise empty desk that Monday morning.
nonfiction
How to Crack an Egg
I picked up the egg. I knew the egg. Mother would rap it on the edge of a cup and it would crumple inward, cracked and ready. It was learning I’d had much longer, deeper, than “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” or “The man who ends up winning.”
reviews
Breath, by Tim Winton. Published by Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Group), 2008.
As he describes his first impression of surfing, “I couldn’t have put words to it as a boy, but later I understood what seized my imagination that day. How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.” Winton thus translates surfing for any reader who sees value in doing things that are pointless yet lovely (as most readers of novels probably will).