Mama plunged into her recipe
box hunting for a clipout
for apricot bars. The instructions
were cut with pinking
shears from Redbook, stained
from splats of preserves & pure
vanilla. I spoon walnuts
& sugar into the sticky orange
concoction, then spread
big blobs over buttery
hand-pounded dough. The zippy
tang of them so unlike the sweet
& mushy homegrown peaches
in our one-stop sign town.
 
“We can’t grow them here,”
she explains as they bubble
in the oven. You have to go
to Mexico for fresh ones & most
grow further away—Turkey,
Armenia, Morocco. I imagine
mama looking up apricot
in the Book of Knowledge,
grabbing the M volume
to locate the city of Marrakesh
with its red clay mosques, olive groves
& crowded open-air markets.