Poem of the Day: Immigrant Picnic
[
http://poetryfoundation.org/poem/29817] by Gregory Djanikian
It's the
Fourth of July, the flags are painting the town, the plastic forks and
knives are laid out like a parade.
And I'm grilling, I've got my apron, I've got potato salad, macaroni,
relish, I've got a hat shaped like the state of Pennsylvania.
I ask my father what's his pleasure and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"
and then, "Hamburger, sure, what's the big difference," as if he's
really asking.
I put on hamburgers and hot dogs, slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,
uncap the condiments. The paper napkins are fluttering away like lost
messages.
"You're running around," my mother says, "like a chicken with its head
loose."
"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off, loose and cut off being as far apart
as, say, son and daughter."
She gives me a quizzical look as though I've been caught in some
impropriety. "I love you and your sister just the same," she says, "Sure,"
my grandmother pipes in, "you're both our children, so why worry?"
That's not the point I begin telling them, and I'm comparing words to fish
now, like the ones in the sea at Port Said, or like birds among the
date palms by the Nile, unrepentantly elusive, wild.
"Sonia," my father says to my mother, "what the hell is he talking about?"
"He's on a ball," my mother says.
"That's roll!" I say, throwing up my hands, "as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll...."
"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks, and my father claps
his hands, "Why sure," he says, "let's have some fun," and launches into
a polka, twirling my mother around and around like the happiest top,
and my uncle is shaking his head, saying "You could grow nuts listening to
us,"
and I'm thinking of pistachios in the Sinai burgeoning without end,
pecans in the South, the jumbled flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,
wordless, confusing, crowding out everything else.