Poems by Rikki Santer
“Vegan Dreams of Meat”
By
Rikki Santer
From the cabin we watch a wide
waterfall on the lip of our property
spill and spill its blood of red clay.
A hard rain has fallen all day.
Around the dinner table my father
and mother now decades dead
join us for a rib roast that I think
I’ve left too long in the oven. I reach
for plates from the cupboard, a stack
there instead of mother’s Desert
Rose china.
The carving knife slides
through generous layers of fat. No peas,
or carrots, or roasted potatoes to accompany,
just plump and juicy muscle that slips
obediently from its bones that I pass
to my smiling parents as the scene
dissolves out of focus, held hostage
by steam, the salt.
“Uncle Max’s Deli”
By Rikki Santer
Amen as we gather beneath the
mantle of delicatessen where the Marx Brothers held court in kippered herring
barrels and I’ll have what she’s having—a Danny Rose Special with marinara and
cream cheese. I scratch at the exfoliation of past before artisanal was deemed
artisanal. when his buckling linoleum and commas of grease tagged foot-tall
mountains of tender pastrami or humps of chopped liver that bedded down with
flirty romaine. How to surf these orbits of memory that spin the halo of my
vegan constellation. I am now a distant galaxy away from splayed portions of
smoked and salty flesh—this fluorescent-bulbous moon where fat was prized and
murder thrived—thick display cases of bulging fish eyes and cow tongues
moaning. His deli was a movie set with perfect portions of schmaltz—dried
scraps of corned beef in ellipses around the slicer blade—dust balls in the
laps of empty front windows—a porcelain cityscape of plates piled high on a
steel counter—Formica tables with just the right amount of fade. I ain’t kvetching
about this concerto of tradition, this immigrant fusion food I devoured
gleefully on Sundays, ignorant of my people’s ruse of secret no-pork sausages
during the Inquisition or the thin and sour rutabaga soup of Auschwitz. What
sandwich would they name after me now? A feeble union of smoked carrot lox and
pureed cashew shmear with a Mogen David martini to wash it all down?
- Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared
in numerous publications both nationally and abroad including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, The Journal of American Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Grimm,
Slipstream and The Main Street Rag. Her work has
received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award
nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. Her seventh collection, In Pearl Broth, was published this spring by Stubborn Mule Press. She
lives in Columbus, Ohio. Please contact her through her website: www.rikkisanter.com
Copyright©2020 by Rikki Santer. All Rights
Reserved.