As I Make Soup for Cathy

By Carla Panciera

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If I had put the stovetop near a window, I would not have missed
the coyotes traipsing through my yard, would not

have had to hear about them from a neighbor who will never die,
who drags out the surveyor’s string to warn me off.

See, I say to the cats. Be grateful you’re not off stalking songbirds.
How dare those predators appear as I crush garbanzo to release

their starch, as the broth thickens, gold as the ornaments Cathy
is teaching herself to make. Though she’s used to building bigger things.

Helicopter pads. Hospital wings. Now her workshop’s full of saw frames,
tiny anvils, a gas torch and flux. How do we develop any expertise?

So many things happen when we look away, things, even medicine
with its divinations, can’t catch a glimpse of.

Say if a tumor could just flit just once past the gnarled orchard
of our bones, then follow a scent elsewhere.

But there’s no fencing anything out. Only the meanest of us
will survive too long. In my kitchen full of turmeric, of vegetables

diced small as gems, the cats recline on the table, no matter
how often they’ve been warned off.

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Carla Panciera’s collection of short stories, Bewildered, received AWP’s 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award. She has also published two collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press) and No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera). Her work has appeared in several journals including Poetry, The New England Review, Nimrod, Painted Bride, and Carolina Quarterly. Panciera’s newest book is Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir.

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