I lift out of a bed of
swaddling shirts
the packages of red chili
I’ve brought out of the
desert
like religious relics
to cook with garlic and oregano,
cumin, round steak. It is a ritual
I learned from my Norwegian
mother,
well beyond her blasphemy
by now,
the quitting of her people
who exalted the pale purity
of butter and
sang Onward, Christian
Soldiers as a single voice.
I will grind the pods, feeling
the burn
of the red skin and seeds
on my fingers—
their rasp when dry like
desert snakes
a kind of phantom pain, the
sting
that is remembering hers
those last years,
on her own in the stark
foreign land
far from the dairies of
Wisconsin,
the mild sloe-eyed butter
cows,
that finds its way into
whatever I write now.
A kind of holy writ
with fire at its heart, fed
on the tinder
of the cottonwood crosses
the Penitentes bear.
—Christie
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