The Accidental German, and: Glucose Self-Monitoring, and: Sombreros

Abstract

The Accidental German Now she shakes lots of hands, drinks coffee from matching cups and saucers recites the Lord's Prayer in German measures in centimeters and grams. She listens to questions about her former home: Why are there so many guns? So many hamburgers? She refuses to scrub her windows and front steps until they're clean enough to lick (a sin). She lights candles at every meal, says good morning, [End Page 97] good evening, good day. Why are there so many fat people? So many skyscrapers? She boards the train each morning with her crumbling briefcase, watches the Rhine muscle its way through the vineyards, gets sentimental for Methodist Churches, rodeo queens and motel ice machines. Why are Americans so shallow? So friendly? The Accidental German watches church spires of her current horizon needle their way into the fog. She's a breathing souvenir here, someone's piece of American apple pie brought back to the Fatherland for flavoring. Back to the Fatherland for spice. Glucose Self-Monitoring A stabbing in miniature, it is, a tiny crime, my own blood parceled drop by drop and set [End Page 98] on the flickering tongue of this machine. It is the spout-punching of trees for syrup new and smooth and sweeter than nature ever intended. It is Sleeping Beauty's curse and fascination. It is the dipstick measuring of oil from the Buick's throat, the necessary maintenance. It is every vampire movie ever made. Hand, my martyr without lips, my quiet cow. I'll milk your fingertips for all they're worth. For what they're worth. Something like a harvest, it is, a tiny crime. Sombreros So it's Ecuador this time. On its back the post card disappears behind your tiny eggs of fountain ink. After seven years you still misspell my name. [End Page 99] The address, though, is correct. It is this side, this paragraph of your voice I slap against the cool gold of the freezer compartment. Magnet-trapped you are, suspended. I leave you talking into the humming coils, the freon bloodstream the cell where ice cubes, popsicles, chopped broccoli and breakfast sausage sleep against their shaggy wall of frost. And the other side - the front? That's what I'd rather see. It looks out at me from between the whirlpool symbol and aerobics schedule. It's a lovely Leo Matiz photo: black, white, and woolly grays. There is a woman surrounded by gleaming sombreros laid across the earth in rows like sun-bleached tea cups with saucer-brims. In a Disney movie they would pop up, chink-chink together and sing. They would walk, with brilliant noodle legs and cartoon ponchos. They would walk away from the woman who wove them and brought them to the raked dirt stall. They would walk away, swaying, up the sun-scarred road to Quito.