Strand


Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Three nights before his death, I described the sweetness 
of his tortilla de patatas to a stranger 
who became my neighbor, a singer whose ears looked pointed but not elvish
enough to trigger a blank verse, and that was three nights

before his death when I hit it off with her, after salting potatoes
and half a dozen eggs 
to cook a tortilla in the shape of Manhattan, a meal that Kafka 
his favorite atheist 
would have pictured as healthy but way too pleasant.