It’s February 1991, and I can’t tell you where the Middle East is on a map, or why it’s called the Middle East. But my family eats Syrian bread with every meal (I can’t tell you the difference between Syrian bread and pita, but I know they’re not the same).
The salad was plump, squealing things I couldn’t understand. I remembered feeling a deep sadness that everything in the world wasn’t painted green, the best color. I hungered for green. The gift of sunlight flecked on leaves, the pale chartreuse of American money.
Each day from January 7 to January 20, Rumpus Original Poems will feature poetry written in response to the coming presidential inauguration. Today’s poems are from Eve L. Ewing.
Do I come across as a middle child with first-child energy? Would you recommend treatment for my character, and if so, from a sliding-scale social worker or a psychiatrist? Meditation or medication? Out-patient or in?
Dad quit smoking via a hypnotist shortly before my sister Margaret was born. When I was eight or nine, he liked telling me the story of the hypnosis, sitting together on the green sofa in the living room, parallelograms of sunlight on the brown carpet.