“Toilet paper too thin, newspapers too fat!”

- British PM Winston Churchill’s cited criticisms of the United States.

(Editor’s note: Mr. Churchill was spot on. And 80 years later, nothing has changed on either of those fronts, although no one really buys newspapers anymore. Sad!)

If you’re reading this humble paper, it is most likely the week of July 4th, which is the independence day of the United States of America.

So in honor of the United States, idiosyncratic immigrants, and summer grilling, here is a poem entitled “Immigrant Picnic” by American poet Gregory Djanikian, who was born in Egypt to Armenian parents, and moved with his family to Pennsylvania at the age of 8.

Immigrant Picnic. Gregory Djanikian 

It’s the Fourth of July, the flags are painting the town, the plastic forks and knives are laid out like a parade.

And I’m grilling, I’ve got my apron, I’ve got potato salad, macaroni, relish, I’ve got a hat shaped like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what’s his pleasure and he says, “Hot dog, medium rare,” and then, “Hamburger, sure, what’s the big difference,” as if he’s really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs, slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas, uncap the condiments. The paper napkins are fluttering away like lost messages.

“You’re running around,” my mother says, “like a chicken with its head loose.”

“Ma,” I say, “you mean cut off, loose and cut off being as far apart as, say, son and daughter.”

She gives me a quizzical look as though I’ve been caught in some impropriety.

“I love you and your sister just the same,” she says, “Sure,” my grandmother pipes in, “you’re both our children, so why worry?”

That’s not the point I begin telling them, and I’m comparing words to fish now, like the ones in the sea at Port Said, or like birds among the date palms by the Nile, unrepentantly elusive, wild.

“Sonia,” my father says to my mother, “what the hell is he talking about?”

“He’s on a ball,” my mother says.

“That’s roll!” I say, throwing up my hands, “as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll....”

“And what about roll out the barrels?” my mother asks, and my father claps his hands, “Why sure,” he says, “let’s have some fun,” and launches into a polka, twirling my mother around and around like the happiest top, and my uncle is shaking his head, saying “You could grow nuts listening to us,” and I’m thinking of pistachios in the Sinai burgeoning without end, pecans in the South, the jumbled flavor of them suddenly in my mouth, wordless, confusing, crowding out everything else.

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News.