WE CROSS THE STREET TO MEET THE INVENTOR OF MAYONNAISE
WE CROSS THE STREET TO MEET
THE INVENTOR OF MAYONNAISE
By Mark Sargent
Excuse, I say, this is my friend Dan and
where would the sandwich be?
She gives us a cross-eyed look, winces
and begins to sway to a music barely discernible
in the grinding din of the Antwerp docks.
Dan, sounding, weirdly, like Nina Simone, sings
No one can always be an angel.
Truth that, says I, or run a deli.
Annamarie Turcauht, as she is formally known,
dismissed us with a wave of the hand
and began to trundle down the pier
shedding years like dandruff until
she was thoroughly in the fifteen century,
far beyond our inane banter
dissolving in the gray wet murk.
Dan, I said, the grayness
astounds us, what can we
sing or be
or why not leap into the sea
on empty stomachs?
Dive, he said, but
for fuck’s sake
don’t hit the water.