Photograph by Lynn Crounse |
|
IOWA
by Kara Synhorst I meet a girl at a party who is biking across Iowa. Iowa? I ask. Yes, her mother was born there, and she loves it. Do you? I ask and I can't keep the surprise out of my voice. Later, I think of my visit. It was humid, like a wet bedspread out of the dryer at the Laundromat that really needs one more tumble, but the dryer costs a dollar, so you will lug it home, heavy and hot and damp. We were going to see my grandmother, who gave me cookies and let me pour sugar in unlimited quantities onto my cereal from a diner-style canister, and who sang me Patsy Cline songs, and who had a roomful of treasures, like a tiny cabinet all for buttons. But also, she was a tornado of narcissism and drama, and everything that turned inward. I got an award! You would yell. I am in the play! and she would exhale and smile faintly and tell you about Cathy's ex-husband's friend, who was arrested but it wasn’t really his fault, because the drama of petty crooks was exciting and you, with your goodness, were not. So I try to lift the humidity of my grandmother off of Iowa, and I see rolling hills, green mossy walls, little Craftsman homes on quiet streets, and it's true, corn. And I see the butterfly gardens in Ames and the house where my great-grandparents lived, but also the Walmart and the Kum and Go, and the restaurants where everything could be topped with sauce and cheese by ordering "garbage style," and I think of my mother's laughter, because we were leaving. Leaving the corn and the humidity, and we would grab our surfboards and grow our hair long and get tans and go back to California, and we would eat tomatoes and tofu and see Pier 39 and go rafting on the river and we would sail and catamaran and see L.A. and go to Disneyland and meet the movie stars and get boob jobs and buy bikinis and wear flip-flops on Christmas CONFLUENCE by Kara Synhorst Between the Chevy's on Garden Highway And the golden Tower Bridge, Between Sacramento and West Sacramento, Between the unlikely ziggurat and the country club, There is a place where two rivers meet. There is an unsteady line there, Where the muddy slow north-south water Meets the denim cold fast east-west stream. The water mixes, presumably. And yet, the line remains. All flows to the ocean. All carries boats. All hosts life. All splashes under the birthday girl in the sombrero eating her chile rellenos. All fingers around the delta islands, all erodes the thousand miles of levees, all nourishes the farmlands, all hitches through the Carquinez Strait, all heads to the bay. But. There is the line, like when we hold our forearms together to see if you are still darker. BEAUTIFUL by Kara Synhorst Check out my ass! I yell to my husband, when I come home from the gym in my booty shorts. I believe I am beautiful I tell my friends. Well, I say to the students. I know lots of people like long hair, but I think it's daring to have it short. Plus, I have the face to pull it off. I had to come twirl for you today, I tell my co-worker, because I knew you would not want to miss this fabulousness. I put this out into the world because someone might as well. Someone average might as well stand up for her magnificence and say "yes, I am beautiful, too, wide nose and moles and extra weight and all." And also, because I sort of do feel like I am beautiful. PRAYER by Kara Synhorst On the toilet paper dispenser Sits a rosary with wooden beads And a wrapped, unused maxi-pad. I wonder if that is the result she was praying for.  Kara Synhorst Kara Synhorst is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento, a high school teacher, a mother of a spirited 3-year-old, a wife, an adventurous home cook, a bass player, a reader, and — when she gets a moment — she is a writer. She has lived in Sacramento for her entire 35 years, never more than seven miles from her childhood home in Tahoe Park. |
Editorial Staff | Editors' Choice
archive | links
