Norwegian Salmon and Mayonnaise
Dolores de Alma Blanca
…Because it’s impossible to buy love, to sell it, to command it with a knife to your beloved’s throat; nor it can be avoided: loving happens….
Jorge Amado
Norwegian Salmon & Mayonnaise is a collection of sixty-two poems by Dolores de Alma Blanca, translated by Lanfranco Aceti. It is dated Frankfurt, 10 August 1996, and was published by Passero in 2026.
The title is the warning: something expensive and something out of a jar, served on the same plate, and nobody at the table admitting the combination is strange. These are poems of wanting, and of the indignity of wanting. A lover is weighed, found temporary, and given an expiration date like a carton of milk. A night is replayed until it wears through. A woman asks, in all seriousness, for a gorilla instead of the man.
The forms are tighter than the manners. A five-line rhyme turns on two Italian words. The first poem closes on the sentence it opened with, so that nothing has moved. Others break apart on the page, mid-thought, where the thought gave out. The comedy and the injury arrive in the same line, and the poem rarely says which one it meant.
Hot Night of Iced Love
You said, “I can’t believe we did it.”
I replied, “I do believe, I love you,”
And I pray to have one more night—
a breath, a spark, a frozen tide—
Each day, I wait, I fight,
To hear your echo raise anew:
“I can’t believe we did it.”
“I do believe, I love you.”
FROM THE COLLECTION
It won’t last.
You won’t last.
I can already see your expiration date:
You are gone—like fresh milk
on a summer day,
unable to resist the heat of passion.
Desideratum
Cuore, my love, it beats for you,
Amore, the only thing I pursue.
I long to flee, yet still I stay,
before you find the words to say—
Amore, Cuore, nothing else will do.
Amore & Cuore
I’d like to have a gorilla, not you—
someone to swat away flies,
a lover to hold me
as an indispensable object.
Game Over
So, for these reasons, simple as they are,
I am upended
by a love story that remains unended.
the end
The complete collection: Kindle · Paperback
EDITIONS
First edition: Passero, 2026
Online edition: OCR, 2026
Kindle edition: Amazon
Paperback edition: Amazon
CITATION
Dolores de Alma Blanca, Norwegian Salmon & Mayonnaise, trans. Lanfranco Aceti (London, New York, and Rome: OCR/Passero Productions, 2026).