Question and Answer
How many things exist in no need of improvement?
Certainly lilacs and chinchillas, phlox, goats, potatoes
and snow, the concept of wet, the scary peal thrown from
a grackle’s throat. The list is endless, extends across
the planets and the senses. I don’t want to overwhelm you:
this is not an epic poem. So confine your answers to things
among what man has made – but put aside the Taj Mahal,
La Tour Eiffel, paintings by Caravaggio, Vermeer, Cezanne,
whoever. Abandon all things elevated: they lead to argument.
Stick instead with the hum of your vacuum, Electrolux
reliable thirty-one years after purchase, the scent of Tide
against your skin since the bassinet; Play-doh in your mouth
salty and silly at a favorite niece’s 10th birthday bash: you can
relax, the recipe hasn’t changed. How about Swedish fish? Good
& Plenty? Those little bells you bing for service at the dry cleaners
or bakery? Perhaps include Pyrex dishes in cornflower motif,
Kleenex and Oreo, comfort in Jello: name brands so beloved
they have birthed proper nouns. My litany to include Parcheesi,
Sweetarts, Slinky, Legos, first-grade lefty scissors with thumb holes
wrapped in green rubber. Don’t forget towering white chef hats
like yeasty cakes on the verge of collapse because we tend to laugh
too loud in the kitchen. Ha-ha. What else deserves our praise?
I’d have to say red bricks, banana splits, polka dots, Shake
and Bake, croquet stripes, that blue-and-green-and-yellow-on-white
plaid we all seem to own. No, I won’t forego the mention
of Hershey bars even though I don’t like chocolate (you do),
nor clear plastic protractors, Boggle, backgammon, Scrabble
and Jacks. Hurrah to soft pink erasers, trampolines, marbles, manual
typewriters, milk crates; do not overlook piƱatas, the pitchpipes,
cast-iron claw-foot tubs, the one billion boxes of Arm & Hammer
Baking Soda purifying the rears of America’s fridges. I salute
the birdbaths, erector sets, xylophones, dog biscuits, and then there’s
money. Homely, green, American, money. Refurbished. Lovely
still. And please do contemplate the following: our wedding
china, pick-up-sticks, barbershop poles’ patriotic twist, clarity
in Dominos, mason jars, Monopoly tokens (I am the wheelbarrow).
Setting up my new apartment I cannot convey to you
the immense pleasure of bringing into the kitchen the girl frocked
in yellow. The one who strolls year after year through rainy navy-
blue, around and around the Morton Salt canister. My sudden home
is hers. Winsome and ginger thing, she has walked nameless for a century,
and I still love her – how not to love her? – she makes me long for the old
Aunt Jemima, doo-rag and all, and why did they go and modernize
Betty Crocker’s pretty face when her red and white cookbook
has launched sixty years of American meals without complaint?
I propose this: death to the infidels, the R&D men
who replaced seven sticks of wax the world over a few years back,
corrupting every Crayola box of its 64 brilliant colors
in Massachusetts, France, Rhodesia and Hungary.
No child should grow up without raw umber, yellow-green.
You have changed, I have changed.
It’s all quite hard enough.
Page(s) 52-54
magazine list
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- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
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