At the Funeral We Ate Lasagna

Susan Johnson

After months of C rations in Algeria came Italy:

fresh tomatoes, hand made pasta, aged cheese.

We went back for thirds, my dad said. That did it.

No matter his Norwegian mother, Swedish father,

from then on he was Italian, Saturday afternoons

transforming our kitchen into a cucina. He became

that Roman chef feeding skinny soldiers, skillets

of sizzling peppers, onions, oregano, enlisting me

to grate imported Romano until my knuckles bled.

Because food transforms us. Sometimes we are

the water roiling, the garlic & oil gasping in the pan.

Other times the over ripe tomato bleeding through

the bottom of the bag. It all counts, nothing wasted,

everything goes into the ragu that goes on everything.

And it didn’t stop there. As a teen I watched embarrassed

when he sucked Thai shrimp, licked hoisin off his

fingers, breathed in fresh onion bialys, tucked into

biryani, brats, bangers & mashed, pickled pigs ears.

He’d eat anything, be anyone, except the dried salted

cod he’d grown up on, that his mother served boiled

with potatoes and her famous orange jello for dessert.

Susan Johnson received her MFA and PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she currently teaches writing. Poems of hers have recently appeared in North American Review, San Pedro River Review, Steam Ticket, Front Range, and SLAB. She lives in South Hadley MA and her commentaries can be heard on NEPR.