Editor’s Note
There is a poetry technique I like to call “Two Movements”—I love it and I rejoice every time I find a well-crafted example of it. Some people may call it a kind of juxtaposition but I find it easier to measure it in terms of movements. In Yoda Olinyk’s poem ‘Marinate’, this technique comes alive in full colour.
The very word ‘marinate’ evokes sensations of stewing and brewing and letting something sit in a kind of liquid to soak in all the flavours. It also works beautifully in a metaphorical sense: letting something gestate, letting it cook in its juices, in its fresh and strange and dark concoction. Consider this, then, the first movement. Now, the second movement—this is when Olinyk juxtaposes, almost seamlessly, the act of food getting marinated along with certain memories sneakily erupting out of that special mix. While on the surface ‘the fat crackles’ and ‘the amino acids brown’ and the ‘maillard reaction kisses muscle’, underneath this act is the hidden seed, the subterranean memory of making ‘a seven and seven before I was seven’, of ‘stumbling through a cornfield when I was fifteen’, of how ‘heat changes everything’. This forms the darker undercurrent, this makes the secret loam of the poem. And it is the fluid weaving of these two threads that shines in Olinyk’s poem, that takes us from a certain moment to another without revealing the fact of any movement at all, let alone two.
—Kunjana Parashar
The Bombay Literary Magazine
as in meat mashed with fingers against a clay bowl
fist-smashed bulb gutted stalk of rosemary
the fat crackles like a fever scorched honey
as the amino acids brown as the maillard reaction
kisses muscle as in I’ve never had sex
without at least six drinks as in macerated
strawberries in honey wine ham tenderized
by a sticky pineapple glove mushrooms packed
underground scorched earth as in
I learned how to make a seven and seven before I was seven
when Opi showed me how to measure the grappa
by pressing my fingerpads flush against the glass
even then I liked how it felt like waiting
he said real men drink at least two fingers
but mine were so small we always made doubles
as in stumbling through a cornfield
when I was fifteen doubles marinated in Labatt 50
the heat of my no against a leather jacket
cheek peppered with dirt as in
heat changes everything
four a.m., you hoist me up—a bag
of hips by then, throw me over your shoulder
& boulder me up the stairs, screaming
i love this girl!! over & over. you flipcup
me onto your bed like i am clean laundry, barely
breathless. now show me those twenty-two-year-old
fingers, my hum becomes moan; i become growl. i come
first & morning comes second. you chase a rainbow
speckle around my abdomen but never offer
me a glass of water. we eat nine hours later—
burnt tlayudas & whole limes. the next thing i know,
there were two one-way flights to Mexico
& you are reading me Bukowski on a sunburnt
bedspread somewhere in Oaxaca. the bed shakes
under us as i pretend to sleep. a 7.4 & you press
the snooze button on my anxiety like it was
one of those black flies. & then there was
that afternoon at that cafe that i have already written
too many poems about—the juicy orange slices
we plunged into cheap beer so cold, i felt it
in the backs of my knees. you told me marriage
was stupid and that if Bukowski were alive today
he would definitely agree. & there i was. a love as big
& round & alive & beautiful as the whole planet
& he believed
earth was flat.
after Paige Lewis
& I’m crumpled up next to bonfire rubble
that poem and I don’t want to bring that shadow
of a man back to life—not tonight, not ever. & I’m on the faux leather
couch in Grant Nelson’s basement losing my
virginity or at least I think I am. Can’t be certain. I’m high
on a lot of weed and a little coke and so is he but he tries
to make it nice. Even lays a towel down so our dewy skin doesn’t stick
to the couch. I think we’re both expecting blood
but there is none. & this time there’s blood and I’m pinned
under a man who wants my blood. Who sniffs
my thighs on day one of my bleed and feasts on me for the next
five days. He’s half beast, half
battlecry. He’s more animal than man and all he wants is
more of me. & it’s different with her. There are flowers
underneath us—lilac, I think—but it could have just been her. Her skin
was so smooth, her shadow edges merged with nature—
with the wildflowers behind that church. & I tried hard to want it but his
beard made little cuts in my neck and all I craved
was lilacs then. He knew and became a shadow that only came out at night,
only came out to steal my breath and my peace and to prove
to me that I could handle the darkness.
It felt sweeter with you. Our shadows
tasted the same—like homesickness and awe.
That first night my shadow tasted like gin, I’m sure—
but after that you only ever got bright, white light when I open
my mouth for you. When I open my legs
for you, your shadow a hymn, and I knew I’d stay here for a while
Acknowledgements
Image credits: Pablo Picasso, Reclining nude (April 4, 1932), oil on canvas, Musée National Picasso, Paris (photo © RMN-Grand Palais, Musée National Picasso, Paris, René-Gabriel Ojéda; © Succession Picasso)
All right. A Picasso nude. From our jaded perspective, now thoroughly— tediously—immune to representationalism, we might as well have posted a picture of a zoo animal. Ho hum. Where the penguins at? But this isn’t the nude of just any model. The painting is of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s muse and lover for nearly 13 years. They had a child together. She was 17 when they met. He was 45. He was Picasso. Three years after he’d died, and a year before she took her life, she said in an interview: “That’s the way it is with him. He violates the woman first, then afterwards we work.” So yes, a Picasso nude. Medium: oil on canvas and a generous application of life’s favourite marinade: complication.
Author | Yoda Olinyk
Yoda Olinyk (she/her) loves to make people comfortable, which is too bad because she is a poet. When she’s not writing or editing, Yoda works as an abortion doula and workshop guide for people in recovery. Her work has appeared in many beloved journals, including Rattle and The Shore. She has published a memoir about restaurant life and two poetry anthologies. You can find her at www.doulaofwords.com. [Text source: Yoda Olinyk]
