-A prose poem by Adam Shechter

Naïve of my origins, my fingers are unable to find where my ancestors
began. The equation follows: The Jews never left Egypt, because they
were never there. And so Abraham was never a Jew, but a grand sensory
deposit stored in the present—maybe, just the memory of a very
poignant smell. So then, my father cannot originate from Israel and
his father in turn does not come from Poland. Yet, like the beets who
will soon lay unrecognizably dissected, I was born in America.

Peeler in hand, I begin to scrape the skin—just enough to cut off a
quarter inch slice. Its exposed body glows in the daylight like a
gloomy silken stone. Ouch! A new pulsation of heat coughs into my
fingertips. I drop the beet onto the counter, a bit of its juice
splatters onto my shorts. Shit! My shorts are black, but still, there
is no darker stain than beet juice. Angrily, I place the meaty sage on
the chopping board and slice off a leg. Mmmhhh…. The vegetable flesh
is good. Sweet. Tart. Yet, it doesn't taste quite done? But is the
beet just not yet ripe? I have no idea how to tell. I can see that it
looks a tad too white in the center! But maybe that is just the way it
is? I throw the beet back into the pot. The old historical gem
stumbles among the others, returning to its throne in the underworld
of the purple black water. Dizzy, I turn the heat way up high, the
dark liquid boils immediately. I bully the flock of beets with a
wooden spoon, shouting at them with superstitious imperatives!
Inevitably coerced, they groan, knock about in the corral of violent
bubbles.

 

My mother never taught me how to cook. My father never taught me a
thing. I only watched their activity from the distance of my little
chair. Her cold wet hands. His hot working hands. Without speaking,
their gesticulations imparted the total separation between me and the
world, me and time, me and culture, me and whatever family might lie
beyond them, preparing a lineage of food. So the equation continues: I
do not know what I am cooking. All I know is that I am boiling beets.
Though without enough water in the pot, they now wade and
fume—half-submerged, beached whales resigned in the shallows.
Ethnically diluted artifacts just barely resisting the anonymity of
culinary violence.  I can boil them no longer, pity has overcome me. I
turn off the fire. They growl as the bubbles subside, the residual
heat leaving in mournful wisps from their pinched and gnarled heads. I
fish them out one by one and dump them into the strainer in the sink.
They land with hard recalcitrant thumps. I run the water ice cold over
their exiled underground forms. My heart bangs with guilt as the
faucet screeches. I mutter aloud "I don't care!" over and over again,
desensitizing myself to the possibility of gastrointestinal
catastrophe. I split one of the steaming globes down its middle and
slice out a triangle of meat. Mmmh…Hmmm? Sweet. But is it still too
bitter? Maybe this is the way a beet is supposed to taste before the
other ingredients of the recipe are added? Or is it undercooked? Or
not yet ripe! This hopeless cycle of guessing spins my brain. I have
no way of answering. And I have no patience. All I can do is lift a
beet and strike its skin with the blade of the peeler. But wait! What
is this? In all of my anxiety, my thumb pressed hard against the
beet's surface and the skin just smushed right off? Could if be true?
Could the process of boiling loosen the skin! Ah, the genius of heat
and water and the human mind! I begin to press my fingers all over the
beet's exterior, and everywhere I press, the skin slides right off,
the cold water purifying my fingers and the beet. The beet—a perfectly
nude round mass. An effervescent holy being in my hands! A naked
little god! I want to cry! I am crying. There are no tears, no
convulsions, but my heart bleeds like a beet in its boiling water. I
strip beet after beet with euphoric fingers until all lay naked and
panting on the white kitchen counter, their skin in mucus piles of
black organic string.

 

Who am I? A man who has just scalped the Patriarchs. An American
orphaned by his Jewishness, crossing the fragile border of his
cultural emptiness, entering the timelessness of America. My hands are
red—I fear the stains are permanent. I begin to slice open the beets.
Chop them into half-inch chunks. I taste an appendage from each. The
bitter sweet overwhelming my taste buds with a chain reaction of
uncertain questions—the same ones I am never able to answer. Though my
lips are a viable biological instrument like any other, they protrude
from a glass mouth that can never truly decipher taste, only allow
transparency from an enviously staring brain, eyeing from deep below
as the warm red liquid fills its glass bowl. Seconds later. Years
later. Mother's hands—mine, mechanically drain the blood from the pot
in a kind of sadomasochistic trance.

 

Though not tasting, my tongue is reminded of a very strong and pungent
odor that I cannot quite remember. Perhaps, the first spreading of my
cells from when I was just a tiny nugget deep in the black universe of
my mother's womb, when I did not even have a nose or mouth. Hanging
there in her boundless dark gunk, watching the seconds of infinity
shrink down into actual narrative time. By the handful, I place the
chopped beets into the bowl, returning them to their blood. Vinegar
must be added as a homeopathic agent, curing them of the pain caused
by their dismemberment. Still, they may gather and reform what was so
hard with thick skin. The love of roots that was viciously yanked from
deep in the firm soil. Firm like their backs that carry their circle,
the distorted sphere of yearning to taste. Their bitterness reduced by
honey, minced onion, salt and pepper to taste. To reduce desire, then
terror, then love for a past that can never surpass the solitude of
beets.

  
Adam Shechter was born out of the ghostly material of Non-Brooklyn. He is also the editor of the online poetry journal, The Blue Jew Yorker. Later this year, a chapbook he coauthored with Daniel Y. Harris called Paul Celan and the Messiah's Broken Levered Tongue will be released by Cervena Barva Press.