Country after CountryAuthor(s): Karen MitchellSource: Callaloo, Vol. 24, No. 3, The Best of Callaloo: Poetry. A Special 25th Anniversary Issue(Summer, 2001), pp. 837-838Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3300208 .

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from Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring 1991)

COUNTRY AFTER COUNTRY

by Karen Mitchell

My mama threw her falafel at him because he wouldn't put any red cabbage on her naked pita- he put everything on the others. Everything for those who stood with cameras, passports- visitors assured like sweat in June.

When she threw her curve, I could see the onion grow roots, my mama swearing, asking, remembering her cattail brew to make the lamb roast faster than a reluctant kiss, to transform the bread into Saltine crackers, to summon the firepeople for a tango of smoke as he tried to explain that some foreigner had tried to remake his recipe.

After she didn't leave for twenty-two minutes, I knew she could tie them up. Those that knew: the boy who fumbled for the word water, coming out of unconsciousness; the woman who mumbled that "everything had been nice," wonderful, like the tour of churches built with in-house tombs. She would tie them up with barbed wire, potent enough to convince the goddess to take them in absence of basil and thyme.

Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 837-838

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CALLALOO

But when she sat down on the sidewalk, pressing her belly like untimed labor, she cried. She said it was like the time when she had to buy those shoes. The saleswoman, explaining that those were the only pair left, exhibited them like they were the tips of the last unicorns.

She had to buy them for the recital, the choir of white dresses singing like angels manufacturing sheen- And now this:

The American coke.

She didn't drink, but threw it at him, watching the ice hit like hail on pane.

838

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