UMBeLS (iii).
“When you allow hardneck garlic to develop a scape (flower stalk), you get what is called an umbel. The umbel (or flower) contains anywhere from forty to two hundred tiny cloves called bulbils.”
Even Ace has a mother.
When he is not at sea she makes him:
apple fritters
box cake
coffee cake
a different kind of coffee cake, this kind with cinnamon to taste
homemade ice cream
Those nights he cannot he sleep he masturbates in his childhood bed
The sheets smell mildly of garlic and applesauce
His cock is insistent within those land-bound sheets
His belly is hard & distended from the homemade ice cream
He cannot tolerate milk
Pia climbs into the boat
It is not her boat it is Ace’s boat
Ace is at his mother’s house
God knows where the daughters are
The daughters always are
Pia brings 1 jar with her the jar contains refrigerator pickles
She made them
Thin sliced cucumber, chopped green pepper, thin sliced onion
Sugar, celery seed, salt
White vinegar
She left them
In a covered bowl
She thinks of
Good things, good good things
Pia only knows the words to 1 song
A song about God
She sings the song as the boat heads for the island
Doesn’t matter which island, any island will do
If you allow the garlic to flower,
It will flower
God willing
Daughter 2 is an oyster
Not the
glimmering luscious pinky grayish pearl lobbing gelatinous wetty wet inside
The rock
The rock
The closed stone
You fool
You fucking fool
Ace is missing his boat. His belly is filled with his mother’s peachalots. The shortening and ice, the whole eggs, the vanilla, the dipped-in-honey-and-powdered-sugar. He skipped from his cock straight to morning. The hot sweet tea and peacholots. And now the sea, aching with fish. The marvelous, silvery fish.
Ace is missing his boat.
I would like you to
See
Each other
This is the prayer Ace offers to his Mother, to his wife Pia, to the great white Christ.
Ace
His hands filled with milk
Daughter 3
Adds vinegar to milk
This is sour-milk/buttermilk
She lays a plate with sliced oranges
And peppers them
She makes salad:
Ham
Bologna
2 carrots
Pickle relish
Hard boiled eggs
Mayonnaise
She eats the salad with a beautiful dignity.
Everything is ground up for the salad
By hand
Picture Daughter 3
The silver machine, the
Cranking
On one piece of bread, the ham salad
On the other piece of bread, peanut butter
Pia sleeps deep in the boat. She dreams of salted eggplant. The salt draws bitterness from the eggplant. You know this. Pia dreams of parchment paper. This time nothing is blue. Everything is milk colored. Even the frittata. Even the cavacuni. Around her, the quiet lap of the ocean, which is milk colored and pressing into her like a kind thumb. Her breath is an egg beater cycling in the garlic-scented air, exhaling the geranium sweetness of the root of her tongue. The island takes on the flavor of elderflowers, the umbel, the full bloom of white flowers. Her breath comes in papery florets. Her breath comes like the white ghosts of honeybees. Pia has tinted her knees with caraway honey. She is taking no chances.