Saul Bennett
On the Menu at the Asia Food Shoppe,
Sunnyside, Queens, 1949
Sounding more sophisticated at mid-century
than chow mein to my mother, subgum became
the minor rage Sundays at Chinese restaurants
situated along the El line in our canton of Queens.
Ordering, in a raised voice, subgum in an eat-out
-you wished to be overheard, of course-
was meant to say, after the War, you were stepping
out smartly in an age when "smartness"
stood for suave, polish, no little derring-do
-picture an early chopper lifting you, say,
from the roof of the RKO Corona, dropping you
at the outskirts (you remembered your camera!)
of some loftier culture. And where is subgum today?
No one I see has seen it in years, years. I recommend
you question closely- grill it-chow mein, although
by now, I would imagine, chow mein, after interring,
summarily, its upstart rival subgum, in bitter decline
for ages itself, has died somewhere in Queens,
long known, owing to, a surprise to many,
its number of cemeteries, as the "Borough of the Dead.