NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HOW A TWINKIE IS AN AMERICAN MADELEINE — ALLIE MARIANO
/no one talks about how a twinkie is an american madeleine & what would proust have to say about that? twinkies—a small chill runs through me—i see the end shelf in the old piggly wiggly stacked high with little debbie cakes, sicksweet and creamfilled. grocery store feet, shoed but still dirt-rubbed into the soles. we spent the weekend at my great-grandmother’s house in sardis, ms: the grand old house was falling apart and later the wooden floors in the kitchen buckled in the humidity and became like ocean waves. the way that the humidity hung in every room and the pecan tree persisted next to the crumbling garage, we found an old doll in the bedroom and named her clara bella. her plastic skin had turned green, and we knew she was haunted. my cousin hung her from the light pull in the bedroom. when the weather came through, we moved to the old parlor and sat on the floor. thunder shook around us, and we unwrapped the twinkies. the cake stuck to our fingers in thin films of shocking sweet.
Allie Mariano is a Southern writer. Her writing has appeared in CutBank, The Citron Review, december, New Orleans’ The Times-Picayune, and other places. She can currently be found in Arkansas, where she is an editor at the Oxford American.
