There's a difference between mayonnaise women and salad dressing women,
the way they drink their tea. "You're from the midwest, dear," one says
when I brush away sugar, "you don't know any better,"
and she might as well have been wearing a hoop-skirt. It's Wednesday,
but the way she walked, it was 1990 and a Saturday pageant for Miss Mississippi.
I smiled and pushed back from the table,
I exude Chicago, apparently.
Long A, the incorrect pronunciation of "theater," and the inexplicable
knowledge of train systems. In Italy last summer,
I woke up before cafe owners, tracked the A train on a map.
My Italian resembles Aunt Martha, perpetually drunk from Olive Garden, carbed up
and too big for her Penne Carbonara, which isn't a thing.
There's no Alfredo in Italy. That's America becoming an ethical slut. At least,
that's just what I read on a shelf in a bookstore.
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