-
Nanking Cherry Jam, and: Antelope Jerky
- Prairie Schooner
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 77, Number 3, Fall 2003
- pp. 18-24
- 10.1353/psg.2003.0091
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Prairie Schooner 77.3 (2003) 18-24
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Two Poems
Lee Ann Roripaugh
Nanking Cherry Jam
The robins squabbled over the berries
late in the summer
when they began to ferment - slick bruisedpulp intoxicating the birds into
a raucous frenzy.
Sometimes one would break into crooked flight,become confused and crash into the clear,
shining expanse of
the porch-room window. Knocked out cold, toothpicklegs stabbing the air, its orange paunch was
incongruous among
the slender limbs of iris, who unfurledtheir yellow-striped tongues and lifted their frilled
wrists up to assume
the statuesque poses of flamenco [End Page 18]dancers. Each time a robin was fallen,
my mother sat guard
on the back porch, poised with a garden hose,waiting to spray any cat who came by
looking to snatch up
a non-confrontational meal. But wait.I've almost forgotten all about
the cherry blossoms.
How they began as tight green buds the sizeof glass pinheads, then erupted almost
overnight like strings
of popcorn - puffy and white, with a faintpink blush. A tiny bird, not a sparrow,
would come to nibble
at the petals. After awhile they'd begin to loosenthemselves from their moorings of stem, bud, branch,
carried by the breeze
so that it was almost a winter blizzardagain outside the dining-room windows,
except for the heat,
the lazy, sweet pink haze of fragrance thathypnotized the bumblebees, fat and furred,
who came to rumble
their deep-throated purr into the sticky waxedears of flowers. I thought my mother seemed
happier in the
company of cherry blossoms. She used [End Page 19]to say that once you leave a place, it's best
not to be always
looking over your own shoulder, but Idon't see how this could be true. I remember
the taste of the jam
she used to make from the Nanking Cherries.Underneath the milky paraffin cap,
not quite the color
of garnets, but more pink, like rhodolites,we spread it in sticky clumps over warm
yellow squares of corn
bread, or across wedges of morning toast -and though the jam was always bittersweet
against my tongue,
I still could taste the fragrant blood-red fruit.
Antelope Jerky
That smell, something like wet dog, stayed
on our hands days
after skinning the gutted meatshell of hollowed-
out antelope on the back lawn -
alternately [End Page 20]shearing through the opaque membrane
of fat that held
skin to flesh with a hunting knife,or pulling off
larger sections of hide by punching
down with a clenchedfist to reveal the cool smooth lengths
of sinewy
purple meat. Finally, the hoovesand head were sawed
off, my father performing a sort
of craniotomyto salvage the pronghorn antlers,
boyish and pleased.
On the mountains, quaking aspenswere beginning
to turn, and the chill settling in
as the porch lightwas turned on had the precision
edge to etch out
lacy frost flowers overnighton the window
panes. Our fingers ached underneath
the garden hoseas we rinsed off knives, gristly bits
of grainy bone
caught in the saw's teeth. The next day [End Page 21]my mother honed
her fierce cleaver, long boning knives,
stainless steel shears,and butchered the antelope one
limb at a time,
my father performing tidyamputations
in the garage and bringing in
a new sectionwhen my mother called him to say
she was ready.
The meat was carved into steaks, chunkedinto stew meat -
slivers and odd bits tossed into
a metal bowlfor jerky. My mother neatly
wrapped everything
in freezer paper and labeledthe packages
in Japanese with black magic
marker, Englishtranslations underneath to be
polite. There was
a special jerky recipe -brown sugar, soy-
sauce, black pepper and Worcestershire,
onion powder. [End Page 22]The leftover meat was fashioned
into slitted
strips, marinated overnight,then hung in rows
over the wire oven racks. Low
heat for a day,the house smoky, warm fragrance of
teriyaki,
everyone so impatientto taste - that same
jerky still in storage today...