Spring 2022 | Paul Hanna Reads "Sweet Dumpling (fried in oil)" – MQR Sound
Paul Hanna reads their poem, "Sweet Dumpling (fried in oil)," from MQR's Spring 2022 issue.
looming over the island I have just uncovered
the Italian secrets of the pasta roller
ravioli is but a dumpling in the grand scheme
of cuisine and what is better than globalization
so I ask my mother if she knows how to make
luqaimat and she tells me that she had made
them once as a child but it was more convenient
to buy the sticky rounds encased in a Styrofoam
and plastic-wrap membrane from Khalid
across the road
today is the day I will out-Arab
my mother I fill a vat with canola oil
four-hundred degrees and silent it awaits
the brigade of rotund yeast and flour fighters
they storm the surface floating and
battle waging there was not one grand
shot to be heard around the world but many
shots only audible to the dust mites who creep
in the cupboards of our suburban kitchen
my mother tells me to step back she says
that hot oil is equally unsympathetic to all clothes
my striped oxford shirt is too precious to
lose as she agitates the oil it grows frustrated
the invaders cannot bear the desert heat they
click and pop but do not deter my mother she
holds her ground threatening with a slotted spoon
the vat retaliates it rejects these strange
soldiers my mother she has been hit a casualty
of this war she disengages the knobs of
the stove and though she is a betsy red
and dressed in injury she saves me
from flames her cheeks and brow rosy
blistered bulbous I am unafflicted crying
but she is silent I sprint for our window
plant and apply aloe and panicked tears to her face
I cannot grasp the atrocities of war I have
lived in Michigan and I have expected the national
guard or the marines to defend me and my mother
is not a member of the armed corps but she has
suffered all the same protecting us from the
consequences of scalding oil
she is taking
a cold shower now and I am staring at the
entrails of ambitious dessert and I am
palpitating and I am sorry
For more from the Spring 2022 special issue of MQR, “Decades of Fire: New Writing from the Middle East and North Africa,” you can purchase the issue here.
