Lasagne

By: Tamar Jacobs

A lasagne is not

like other things

you can leave to simmer, 

break down. It’s not 

an it gets better the longer 

you cook it situation. I

should know this. I

have made lasagnes 

before. It was when

I had time, I guess, 

or made time for making

all those layers, layering them,

and all that tending, watching.

I am not a trad wife. I am not, actually,

interested in seeing if I can feel

my ancestral Sicilianness in boxes 

of pasta sheets. I am standing 

in front of our oven. The lasagne 

has burned. Foil, right:

I forgot. I was reaching 

for something when I decided

to make this. If I could turn

back, let all these animals in all

these sausages, ground meats,

two different kinds,

have their lives back, I would do it, 

do whatever 

needed doing for this to happen: butcher paper 

unwrapped, meat unground, animals breathing, 

walking, living their days how our 

dog, cat, guinea pigs

live theirs, feeding themselves, 

reaching for existence in 

plain terms, no crutch of 

a story to justify anything, 

no need for a reason

for being. 

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Tamar Jacobs's work appears in Gulf Coast, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. Her unpublished novel A Kind of Music Not a Song was a finalist for the Janus Prize awarded by the Chautauqua Institute. She is a Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize winner.