EMILY ZOGBI, FEATURED IN THE NEW OCEAN STATE REVIEW

Ode to a Scene in Moonstruck

I could watch Olympia Dukakis make eggs-in-a-hole
for the rest of my life. Just that one scene on loop:
the closeup of the buttered cast iron, the slices
of good bread (& you know it’s good bread),
the yolk, bright & wiggling in its basket
&, finally, the peppers, greasy gems
effortlessly flipped. In that moment I swear
Olympia Dukakis is my mother, is any woman
in my family (& yes, maybe that makes me Cher)
sliding a precious object onto my plate, lamenting
about the house, We’ll sell the house
because grandma’s dead & everybody’s left me,
even though I’m sitting right here, ma.
Olympia Dukakis isn’t worried about the moon
or its size or what brings one person into the arms
of another, as if a rock floating in the sky has any say
in how she wastes her time. No, she is preoccupied
with more pressing matters like, again, the house,
breakfast right now, dinner tonight, the bruise
on her daughter’s neck. She doesn’t care
about the inevitability of love (she is well aware)
or about little boys and their obsessions
with what doesn’t belong to them.
One day that stupid rock could come
hurtling toward her kitchen, which has stood
for a hundred years, and she would still raise
one crooked finger to the man standing closest
and say, No matter what you do, you’re gonna die
just like everybody else.

“Ode to a Scene in Moonstruck” is a very special poem for me. I like poems about food, and I like poems about movies. I also think poets should write about their favorite things, and two of my favorite things are breakfast and Moonstruck. Food is a powerful tool, you know, the ritual of it—even something as simple as an egg-in-a-hole. It pulls the recipient into the orbit of the maker. This poem started as a thought that I’m pretty sure I had during my 20th rewatch of that movie, which was, “I could watch Olympia Dukakis make eggs-in-a-hole for the rest of my life.” The rest of the poem followed, sort of coming to me all at once, which is a rare and beautiful thing to happen to a poet. There was definitely some scrambling for my notebook at that moment. Of course, I edited and tinkered until I thought it was ready, but the words, the story, remain virtually unchanged. The form speaks to the way I wrote the poem—if I were to break it up into couplets or multiple stanzas, that would have been too much of an interruption in the flow.

I wanted the poem to capture the feeling that I get when watching that movie. That’s what a lot of poetry/art is, I think, for the most part: the attempt to translate a feeling into words or images. In many ways, like a lot of my poems, this is an ode to the women in my family, with the late, great Olympia Dukakis serving as a stand-in in the poem, because she acted it so well. That line, “We’ll sell the house,” is very true to life. Guilt and love are two sides of the same coin. That being said, I don’t think you have to know Moonstruck to understand the poem, even though it’s a great flick and everyone should give it a chance. Mostly, I wanted the reader to feel like they were sitting across the kitchen table from a formidable matriarch who just knows how life works because she’s lived it. There is something familiar and safe about her, but at the same time, she’s going to tell you what’s what, whether you like it or not. “No matter what you do, you’re gonna die. Just like everybody else.”

Emily Zogbi is a writer from Long Island and earned her MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rumble Fish Quarterly, Chronogram, Half Mystic, RHINO Poetry, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Empty House Press, and more. Emily was also the recipient of the 2021 Sappho Poetry Prize from Palette Poetry. She wishes she had been a dancer. Twitter: @emilyrosezombie Instagram: @e.zogbi