I was wending down a sixlane nightmarescape: some hoary lumbering Chevy truck honkhonking with odd lethargy behind me, as My Partner aped its sound with her own throat in a fit of mild distraction. Spinachgreen the exit sign, flaming red the head of the rearview motorist, moonwhite her nails calackcalacking Spotify, and empty the avenue right.
I took.
Pero que bonito y sabroso…
The truck blueshifted where we had been. Outrageous glee overtook the highway when his smile scumbled residual in my eyesight, our rubyred Kia Sorento swerving in behind the steel behemoth I thought for a long inoperable Choochoo train.
No,
“That’s a hogsmoker. ———— told me once!”
Now there’s a name I’d drop recalling, fain.
Para reír y cantar!
“O, Brazen Bull! The Fate of the Christians! And Burdunellus, too!”
I shouted.
You know it’s love when she laughs at jokes ununderstood. I do the same for her. A free space gaped transverse the contraption.
There was a mild herald to this pitstop, I ought admit: a [now meteorically celebrated] friend from the Mississippi, and one [ironically, likewise] from Europe, in whose taste on all matters gustatory I have perfect confidence, have recommended us this town, this restaurant—a potential digestif to the haunting trauma that incited this journey.
MISSION BBQ
(To the side sat a twocolored star
incumbent another shape ditto:
The American Way
coldfrothy beaker of Orangeade.)
With four hands on the iron stanchion, we pulled free the slab of petrified wood and a long vestibule saw.
Here were windows to watch all manner worldly mastication: an omniscient appetizer for any enterprising trencherman.
We approached the bar.
A militant panoply of tchotchkes and sabres and drapeaux and photos (in color and not) and finally pastillepistilled lightbulbs wirepetaled—all reproduced from elsewhere, elsetime, and looking at home far more on a submarine than any restaurant or museum.
We were waited on by a young lady in a coalcolored apron stained grey. Her face was infantcheeked. Her hair so blonde, it corrected grey as well. Her [ha ha] prenom, from the tag, read Pollyanna. And there was no predicting her age.
My Partner helved a bottleneck. Slick with melted ice, it slipped between her fingers twice before she gripped the base zweihänding. Its sour, volatile blue could’ve sprang in shards on the cold, stony ground had she dropped it. There were 20 other bobbing necks in the icetub: the majority orange, tan, or brown. She gently slid it toward the register on its pocked bottom.
Blue My Mind.
Like a deathrigid chicken.
A ways away, in Taiwan they spray nepenthe into melted glass. Her name is “Corn Starch” now. Do they praise that hand? In Far Cathay are lightbulbs made—a weldingmask watches the tweezered horsehair flicker and jolt. Do they praise its flame, a Frankenstein? Cathoded frogs legs. The sap of man is rot’ly sucked.
Being a vegetarian, I ordered a salad of garden greens.
My Partner pulled a brittle bronze MasterCard with her not-wet hand from the unembellished nightfall purse and gave it to Miss Polyana Gerohebe.
All names looks best embossed.
Hiss! Around behind, the cooks made churlish burping how Tellers do, content in watching counted coins, or sharing myths not meant to live.
Down the tablelane.
A dapper family of 12 celebrated the youngest’s birthday (10th) with fixings and festoonings.
Beside them an obese and bearded trio clad in blue denim coveralls made greegrees out of drinkstraw pericarps, and hurlyburlied huskily to sweating polkadots suspended on a T.V. screen.
“Somebody kill that fuckin’ cardinal a’ready.”
Ominous. Potent. Portentous. And Papist.
Or Collegiate? Both are found in Louisville oft.
For this is where the Children of God novelly congregate; they’ve been driven out elsewhere, you see. Didn’t you know the danger of being Christian? Well, m’brother…You do now. Say…let me tell you about Galatians…
A stainless steel orrery: its binary stanchions annulated with tawny, long, toroid stars.
My Partner sat first. In the light, smiling, her nose and cheeks were both aglow. Down caught the light yellow. I love our silent jokes the best of all. She inclined with her hands crushed underskirt, irises arched sarcastic up:
“No te olvides del Alamo.”
The selfsame mission hung above us. She indicated it.
Lay down your money
and you play your part.
Diagonal, an avianthrope somersaulted into coeds how bowlingballs are wont.
He needs must piss.
“I have to pee.”
Tap.
“Remember.”
She cut her finger on the frame where the wood was toothed.
The bathroom wall was Vietnam. And four army dames in a camo Jeep smiled in Iwo Jima, as seen on the exit door. Snowy the smiles, and sandy the right.
More recently, We had endeavors in Olshazar.
In a rectangularly asymmetric aluminum trough, two little ziggurats imitating the diced meat in mock-crab cat food hovered civilly next to the em-dash slatted sluice. What was their provenance? What were they? Next door someone moaned in counterpoint to nature’s throes.
A semisterile ivory hyoid: …
I reconfigured my path pacmanic outside again: around the deal booths now. My Partner had at some point fetched our food.
Etherized football jerseys and helms with dead decals, the spoils of their conquered favorite gladiator.
My Partner recommends the brisket, moist.
God! I wish I could feel like A Hero (!) when I took a bite of brisket. When My Partner knocked the ketchup bottle down and it burped an aqueous pink upon my shorts, where could I have gone to claim my Purple Heart?
Mission BBQ’s cornbread is delectably sweet. And their Mac’s the perfect balance of creamy and crusted when topped with that peerless caseized skim. Purple skin, white bellied, bitter. Crenelated fans, Verdure.
Tomato were cut; Carrots were shredded; Cucumbers were bisected.
“How’s it taste?”
“N’oublie pas l’Alamo.”
A souped-up electric wheelchair zoomed precariously out of a deli called Moby Dick across the street with a lolling hairless male (?) mannequin strapped to its mandibles. Their neighbor was a Frisch’s Big Boy.
Recall.
R’dwybl was everywhere. My Partner pinched and pinched her middle finger till the blood coagulated. A brown paper shuttlecock minutely painted, tossed, discarded, crumpled, bounced, and rocked on the table like some phantom’s redfringed origami toy. Her chops were tarred with gravy. A cutesy misplaced hair caught on the upper lip.
Was this metatheatrical zest, I inquired?
“Mmmfrrgarrhjst?”
A sort of New Communion to this, Our Third Great Awakening—hereby the blood of Christopher is transfigured as the varied sauces, and his brown and tender flesh goes to that of Brits, Iraqis, Afghanis, Iranians, and the Vietnamese? When the hogsmoker caught fire outside, was it a mimesis of 9/11? Now all of us sup from the dugs of the iron swine as well.
Strips of worldly saltiness; Ribboned tubes of integrated organs; a farflung minescorched haunch.
Her red dot, now just “an” to be, hid in the sand amid El Pioppo.
My Partner recommends the Tupelo Honey Heat with Carolina Vinegar—at least for the meat.
“How was your salad?”
Yummers!!!!!!
Louisville, KY.
