Lost Arts
[N]o one knows how to make homemade pierogies anymore.
A Polish man in a dive bar tells my mother that no one knows how to make homemade pierogies anymore. My mother remembers making them with her grandmother, remembers exactly how to crimp and fold them, how the flour stuck to her hands. She tells him she now buys pierogies for her husband every Christmas from the Polish Market. The man says he wants to teach his niece how to make them, but she doesn’t seem that interested in doing so. My mother tells the man that there are so many skills she wishes children would learn these days. She remembers how her mother used to sew, but my mother was never taught because she never showed interest in the craft. She says she can just barely sew a button onto her jacket, but she wishes she could do more with her hands instead of just holding a beer.
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul’s Drag Race Twitter Poetry (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has appeared in The Broadkill Review, Sage Cigarettes, Barrelhouse, Fifth Wheel Press, Cutbow Quarterly, and more. Visit carriganak.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @carriganak for more info.
