<b><span style="font-style: normal;"></span></b><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b> Mondongo is Not a Soup</b></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b><br></b></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>On the D train to Coney
Island, a little girl whose black patent leather shoes with
heart-shaped buckles on them do not reach the floor sneezes on her green
helium-filled balloon.<span> </span>She stares
at it, shakes it, then finds the corner of the coat she's wearing and wipes the
balloon.<span> </span>Then she wipes it again,
with her hand.<span> </span>Then she rests her
chin on it.<span> </span>Her father reads aloud
to her mother from <i>Your First Year in
Network Marketing</i>:<span> </span>"Here's a
typical scenario," and reaches up to tap away the balloon, which is now touching
his head.<span> </span>The girl is still holding
the attached strand of green ribbon.<span>
</span>He reads, "There are three kinds of apples -- the red, the green, and the
rotten."<span> </span>He has a New York Lottery
gym bag on his lap.<span> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>At La Taza de Oro on 8th
Avenue near 15th Street, there is a rotary pay phone
near the entrance.<span> </span>The action in
the dial is liquid, hydraulic, leisurely, and greasy to the touch.<span> </span>At the far end of the counter, a big
man, in charge, stands near the kitchen entrance and uses an ordinary table
knife to cut -- to push, really -- bite-size pieces of under-ripe avocado onto
one bed of lettuce at a time. <span> </span>Then
he slices a white onion and puts one slice, separating its concentric rings
without breaking them apart, on top of each avocado mound, and puts each plate
into the refrigerator case.<span> </span>Across
the counter, a young waiter mutters to himself, then says aloud that he ordered
"dos sopas de mondongo" and where are they?<span> </span>The older man corrects him:<span> </span>"<i>Dos mondongo: </i>mondongo no es una
sopa."<span> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>At Mooney's Bar on Flatbush, a black man asks if I'm from "the
colonies."<span> </span>Then he asks if I smoke
marijuana and adds, "I'm not a cop.<span>
</span>I'm a construction worker." <span> </span>He offers to let me feel his hands.<span> </span>The pear blossoms in the spring sunshine
glow, seemingly bursting with fat.<span>
</span>A closer look and the bubbles are imperfect hemispheric constellations of
8-10 small flowers each.<span> </span>An even
closer look and the tiny pistils are purple.<span> </span>On 7th Avenue in Park Slope, a woman walks
with a yellow umbrella open.<span> </span>Three
women from the colonies watch her.<span>
</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>"Maybe she knows something we don't." </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>"Maybe she forget. Maybe where she comin' from it's rainin'."</p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>At the 23rd
Street station on the 1/9 line, downtown side, a
young white woman with an English accent says to the man in the token booth:
"You <i>do</i> have the power to do
something about it," and repeatedly calls him "arsehole."<span> </span>After passing through the turnstile, she
sits on a bench with her face in her hands and cries. At the 28th Street station
on the N/R line, downtown side, a middle-aged brown-skinned man glares at the
man in the token booth and yells, making a trilling sound in his throat,<span> </span>"You!<span> </span>BAAAAAA!<span> </span>Fucking goat!"<span> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>Two men, one pushing, one pulling, move a jet-ski chassis down the
sidewalk and around the corner of Carroll and 4th Avenue, leaving a white,
chalk-like, curved, double line.<span> </span>An
eighteen-wheeler flatbed takes a turn fast, bouncing its cargo of engine blocks
secured atop a bed of tires.<span> </span>Two
girls, one holding a folded slice of pizza, approach portable toilets, one of
which is padlocked, in Prospect Park.<span> </span>Thirteen monosyllables: </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>
</span>"I went in there once and they trapped me in there."</p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span> </span>"I won't."</p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br></p><div><b>Mark Dow</b>'s poems and prose have appeared in <i>Mudlark, Nthposition,
Fascicle, Boston Review, LIT, Conjunctions, Green Integer Review</i> (translations
from Buenos Aires). He also wrote a book called <i>American Gulag: Inside US
Immigration Prisons</i> (California 2004).<br><br><br>~<br><br>Frequent <a href="http://www.realpoetik.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">www.realpoetik.blogspot.com</a> for poems;<br><a href="http://www.realpoetikblog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">
www.realpoetikblog.blogspot.com
</a> for news!<br></div>