I grab for a sausage and rose petal jam at the airport before I leave Poland. I am a peasant princess. With an eunuch knife in my hand. This, my transcontinental dowry. In the air the pork scratching, pangs of conscience. Sizzles. Folkberg variations. Folk cabbala. Kiełbaska, kiełbasa, kabanos, kabanosik. Swaddled offspring. The sacrificial baby of my tongue. Foreign gods hover in the air. Forage replete. Dogwoods grow in silence. I will offer this flower of Polish fields to Lady Liberty. Upon landing, I promise myself to leave the sausage behind in the nearest bathroom. If God lets my sausage in, I will eat it like a saint with incense, circle a table with Gregorian chants. The baggage carousel spurts out my luggage and with the air of greatest conspiracy, I transfer my sausage from a carry-on into checked luggage. I look around. I pray for my sausage while I keep moving towards customs. Angelus trickles. Angelus salivates. St George is about to put his spear through a sizzling dragon. The officer pulls me aside. My luggage goes through a "sausage scan." The juices drained, sterile. Can an old sausage be born young again? The officer holds my sausage up to the light. His babushka trophy. "It's a sealed sausage," I declare with pride, I brought him a new species. "But you declared: no meats," the officer says. "Sealed Sausage is not a meat." "Sealed sausage is a sealed sausage!" As I exclaim it, the guardian angels of my sealed sausage swarm and sow their faces under the investigation light. The officer blinks when I repeat with determination: "A sealed sausage is a sealed sausage." He looks blinded. The hypnotic alliteration throws him back to the waters of his childhood where eels jiggle their Scottish dances in the water. Oh, detained sausage. Saint of arrest pray for us. Oh, a new species have mercy on us. Escape of borders. Oh, an oven bird whose migratory song consists of a sausage a sausage a sausage. Oh, a tower of Lady L feed us. The sausage of martyrs. The sealed patriarch. Let the Virgin Liberty swallow it.
