Frances Ruhlen McConnel
	Coat Hanger Risotto 1 I dreamed we were making a meal of cut-up coat-hangers. There was no question they would go down hard, but they would go down. I was cooking them with cheese and rice or maybe it was grits and, while the pot simmered, we were reading a poem about exotic dishes. Cheryl read the first stanza and Michael the second, but I couldn't wait for my turn and was murmuring all the lines under my breath. Michael thought the recipe for corn and kitty litter was brilliant. (Or maybe he meant the image.) We seemed to be on a ship or perhaps a large boat and it was tossing enough to make the dishes rattle. 2 Maybe the dream's boat came from the call I'd gotten the day before from my first husband, the weekend skipper. He'd updated me on the construction of the visitors' bunker at his and his second wife's place in the San Juan Islands which you had to reach by boat. Not that this was an invitation. He wanted our second daughter's phone number as he kept getting the message that the one he had was out of service and he seemed surprised she had a new area code. A couple of years new. Then I told him my brother had just visited; but because when I used his old nickname, “Dusty.” my ex said “Who?” and I had to explain, I didn't tell him of Dusty's recent diagnosis of possible liver cancer, though I did mention the interferon treatments he was starting for his Hep C which were said to make you sick as a landlubber. 3 In the dream, I was steadying the pot which was bubbling madly, chunks of coat-hangers bobbing up and down and the yellow of the Cheddar as bright as poppies, and I thought I couldn't wait for it to cool, or the poem to be over; I was that eager to dig in.