a rye smile
“give me your bruised, your brown,
your bundled mashes hungering to bake free,
the ripened rejects of your pantry jaune.
send these, the softest, ethylene-lost, to me,
i leave my spoon by the oven door!”
A very much tongue-in-cheek parody of Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus.
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The attempted coup on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 has been an ever-looming cloud on our Republic. The inauguration of President-Elect Joe Biden cannot come soon enough. As I was listening to my daily podcasts about preparations for downtown D.C. and more potential insurrectionists, I turned to see my bunch of very sad, very brown bananas. Maybe it is a mix of the current events and my darkening humor, but I thought of Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus.
It has been about 10 months since my last loaf of panic-pandemic banana bread. I think I shall bake some this weekend.