Making
Noodles
Shannon E. Brewer
Seventeen thick ribbons
stretched out before us
on the floured counter top.
A Polish grandmother
couldn’t have done it better.
That afternoon we rolled
noodles from batter thick
like paste, yellow with egg,
ironically cooking the food
of our ancestors.
We bumped elbows,
breathed in puffs of flour
as it settled in our nostrils
and hair.
What possessed two teenagers
to bake dough in
the Midwestern heat?
As we rolled and stretched,
her father and my mother
made love on yellowing sheets
in a room across town.
Shannon E. Brewer lives in