It’s been really exciting to put together the debut Salt City DISHES. We’ve had some great press, and are expecting more than 100 people to show up for our dinner on the 23rd. That means the winning project will take home $1,000. This is microfinance in action.

In addition to the dinner — the menu includes butternut squash and coconut soup, lemon fettucini with roasted fennel and tomato — Rhode Island-based band Brown Bird will play.

I’m so honored by the many local businesses that, through their generosity, have made the event possible. And I’m still working on a final list of those to thank.

Personally, it’s been really meaningful to put together the event. I’ve written about urban revitalization for some time, and about the arts for even longer than that. DISHES has given me the opportunity to bring together those two interests in such a way that also creates value for other people. And that hopefully will make the Salt City a warmer, livelier, friendlier place to live.

Check back next week for photos. Until then, I leave you with Lexi Rudnitsky’s “Deepest Remains.”

Deepest Remains
Lexi Rudnitsky

What stays with you latest and deepest? Of curious panics
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?
—Walt Whitman

1.
In my early years I spoke in many languages.
Then I grew quiet.

(This is not an obituary.)

Some of my dreams faded,
if they could count as dreams.

I was a good friend,
though I mostly called
when there was no one else

I was a poet,
though I only wrote
when there was nothing else
(That was often enough.)

2.
I was truly in love once, as least as I remember it.

A boy from another country said,
I intend to go alone,
which was not what I intended.

I learned to sleep in a hammock,
my body sagging to the floor.

I bathed in the river fully clothed:
the cotton clung, translucent.
(A man watched from the outer banks.)

I spent the night on an ancient pyramid,
monkeys shrieking through the trees,

I bribed a guard to leave me alone,
and there was no one left to tell.

3.
A young man skipped ahead on the trail.
I must have said, Wait.
(Years passed.)
How could I say goodbye?

I sealed leftovers in ziplock bags;
I wore a flowered bathrobe.

I began to listen to books on tape,
especially biography.

(This is not an obituary.)

There was a jungle-book ending:
strands of dirty-blond light
shone through the spreading palms.