Lunch
Lunch
Sewing machine (or free motion) embroidery on cotton: 23- 4 X 6 inch captioned panels for the story Lunch.
first gallery exhibit in 2003 at Convergence at the Round House
first public showing as an anonymous street card in 1998
LUNCH
She slides
into one of those invalid-blue discomfort chairs
under ‘Gate 21’ where her future lay refueling
a tiny brown paper lunch-bag perched in her diminutive lap
I admire
the distinctiveness with which she slips
from this unlikely sack
a half dozen oysters
artfully arranged on seaweed
and how
with the gusto of a gossip savoring overheard conversations
she slurps them into mollusk oblivion
I pinch my inner arm
She presses her tongue along the corners of her mouth
and her skirts
apparently without her assistance
appear to rise and crowd her thighs
Certain that I am deceived by a trick of terminal light
I stare as
from the worn and torn receptacle housing the gutted bivalves
a platter of tossed greens emerges
coated with crumbled chèvre
and
a tasteful sprinkling of fresh raspberries
I determine I am witnessing the impossible
She pulls out a seven inch tower of Mocha Fantasy
when her flight is called
nibbling off a small chunk
with unconcealed regret
she replaces her fantastic post-repast indulgence
into its chimeric culinary bindle
and as she takes her place in the slow moving line
a gust of air conditioned fate
holds her self-determined skirts poised
like a hula-hoop about her rolling derrière
Now her plane is not my plane
so I do not try to follow
my feet firmly planted on the ground
later
I will be sure
so sure
that I have been privy to some mystery
that I will begin buying tickets
cheap ones, at first, to nearby locations
just to roam the terminal
hoping she will reappear
later still
I will begin to fly
farther and farther
spending
more and more time
in terminals around the globe
when I find her again
I won’t hesitate
I’ll follow
find a way
to lay my head
in her magnanimous skirts
and perhaps
never return