Spit on the great cities Mary Marbourg (bio) The zucchini's frying, and your mother's sniffing her hair. The eggplant's been sliced; the bits where the worms bored dark holes in the white fibers, cut out.Lapland thumps his tail in the mudroom. You're getting him to participate in a no-no.Your father stands at the picture window, wearing a brown cap with the ear flaps down.On the chessboard is a thumb-sized space that can hold a rook, a knight, or a bishop; he hasn't discovered which shape will fill the space and is playing through the variations.There's a patch of pink light on the snow; your mother cranes over the cutting board to make out the source. ________ You became aware of your breathing and her breathing.You're both collapsed on the neighbor's linoleum floor, your backs against the cabinets. You're inclined toward each other, two poles of a tent.Your hair's stuck on a round knob.The linoleum's mint-and-mauve repeating diamond motif's gouged around the kitchen chairs' legs in a crude petal pattern.The neighbor's wool-socked feet cross in front of you; the faucet turns on; the water's pitch changes as it first hits the metal sink, then the bottom of the metal kettle;the feet cross in front of you again; a match is struck; click, click, click; the burner whooshes. [End Page 82] The kettle shakes and shudders, vibrates and rattles right before whistling; you count the round petal impressions in the linoleum.It will be okay; it will not be okay; it will be okay. You're handed a cup of tea. You wrap your fingers around the hot, white ceramic.It will not be okay. Out the picture window, your footprints are visible in the snow; a black mutt huddles near a woodpile covered with a flapping, fraying blue tarp; a bird feeder hangs from a cedar tree's spindly branch, the red outcrop of plastic perches, birdless; a greasy smudge, the size of the side of a palm, makes the glass also part of what you're seeing. So often when you're with your mother, you're an ear that sprouts lines of hearing: her pencils rapidly moving across her notebook as she shades a Rufus hummingbird's rust-red neck, her wedding ring chiming against her coffee mug, her high-pitched hum while she cuts vegetables.Now, walking the dirt path back to the house, there are no errant dings, rattles, rustles, no throat clearances or colorful things being plucked and pocketed;she's a great blue heron, stock-still in a sycamore's blanched branches. You see your father chasing a page the snow's made cream colored; it's page one hundred ninety-six of Thus Spake Zarathustra.When he catches it, he waves it at you like a flag. [End Page 83] Mary Marbourg Mary Marbourg grew up in the Ozarks. She attended the University of Iowa and the University of Arizona. She has taught creative writing at the University of Arizona and written children's books for a publishing house in Seoul. Currently, she lives in North India where she edits books on the Yoga and Vedânta. Copyright © 2018 University of Nebraska Press