Food and me, #12: So, I haven't (quite) given up.

Perhaps you've given up on me, but I have not quite given up.  The start of school has been crazy.  And the semester has been crazy.  And right now I'm taking every day one day at a time.  But tonight, I thought I would make good on a promise and take one tiny step forward on these last six blogs by posting a poem that attempts to capture the rest of my experience which I left unfinished in #11.

Thirst

I drove down the green road,

past the golf course, past
the carefully manicured lawns, past
the Starbucks and the neat fluorescent aisles
of the local grocery store.

"My soul thirsts for you, God,”
I said, my bones clenching
the soft steering wheel,
“my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land
where there is no water left
since we pour it into the ground
an offering to green grass;
since we reverse osmosis filter it
for dehydrating stimulants;
since we hoard it in sterile,
clear plastic bottles.”

So I asked the LORD, the God
of power and glory, “Show me your face.”
I thought he might want me to burn
incense or fast or protest golf.

But the LORD said, “Rise up early
and go to the farmers market.
I will be there.”
Well, I didn’t make it very early,
I hoped that God would still be around.
The “bull’s blood” beets were fat and red,
there were purple carrots, and speckled
shelling beans and flat
kale leaves and jalapeño
peppers. The farmers smiled
and chatted. I bought some green
beans, but I didn’t see God.

So I asked the LORD, the God
of steadfast love, “Show me your face.”
I thought he might want me to
give up all I have or steal
from the rich and give to the poor.

But the LORD said, “Go to the butcher
and buy a free-range chicken.
I will be there.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
I looked around the narrow store
before timidly making my order
to the tall boy behind the counter
with the knives. They had wild Elk burgers
and salt pork and gammon bacon and bones
for soup. I left grasping the smallest
chicken like a goldfish from the fair,
but as it squished around in the bag I kinda felt
ripped off. I didn’t see God.

So I said to the LORD, the God
of silence, “Show me your face.”
I didn’t know what he was going
to say this time. And I wasn’t really sure
if I would do it anyway.

And the LORD said, “Cook that recipe
from Julia Child that you love so much,
use the bottle of sherry you’ve been saving
for something special and eat dinner
with your husband. I will be there.”
By now I was pretty sure God was
on vacation and had his auto-reply on random.

But I dusted off the sherry, put
it on the table, and considered it for a while.
It couldn’t hurt to try. So I cooked.
I cut out the chicken’s spine,
set it aside for stock. I split
the breast from drumstick, thigh,
wing, tenderloin, patted them dry and
dropped them into butter and oil.
Once they were brown and waiting,
into the pan went peeled, seeded tomatoes
and broth and the sherry. And, at the last,
sautéed brown mushrooms.

I boiled the green beans,
then they too sautéed carefully in butter
before I scooped them into the serving bowl,
pouring the sauce over the chicken
and, finally, setting the table.
We lit the candles, poured
the sherry, pulled our napkins
into our laps, broke the bread.
And the LORD was there.

Food and Me, #10: Diptych, Christ in two panels

Panel II.

After we visit the gravesite
and cry and hold one another,
we go out for lunch. And after
lunch we are tired and full, but we agree
to stop by Auntie Asha’s house, just for
fifteen minutes. Not a minute more.
I have a paper to finish.
And no heart for family.

When we arrive in Auntie’s red kitchen,
greeted by three generations of kisses
and the steel drum lilt of Trini voices,
the roti flour is already mixed
and kneaded, waiting for hands,
waiting to be divided into paratha
and dhalpuri. I poke my fingers
into the cotton-white dough
and learn with my fingers
the perfect proportions
of flour, baking powder,
salt and water to rise.

I give Grandma a kiss,
but I don’t think she knows who I am
until I say, “I’m learning to make roti,
Grandma!” Comprehending shines
on her wrinkled, cinnamon face.

Auntie Annie rolls the paratha
into a flat, white disk. A sprinkle
of flour, a smear of soft butter.
She cuts the dough into three strips
stacks them and rolls them together
into a great lump to rest.
Grandma sits and watches
from her chair like a throne.
“You ain’ doin’ it right,”
the queen of roti complains.
But even in her regal disdain,
she leans forward with excitement,
a little girl spying the action.

Uncle Al brings out the grinder
and the boiled golden dhal
becomes a soft flour. Asha
calls out for the geera,
“It’s behind your head!”
I root in the cabinet,
“Is this it?” “I don’t know,
let me smell it.” As the jar
opens the smell of cumin fills the room
and the dhal becomes roti.
The hands of three women
cup dough and scoop in the dhal,
carefully closing each into a ball.

The paratha is done resting.
Annie rolls it on the red counter
back into a white circle,
brushing oil on the heavy iron
tawa and slapping a full white moon
into its black sky.

“The last thing you have to do,”
Annie says grabbing the toasty hot roti
in an old dish towel with faded blue flowers,
"is bust it up.” She bunches the
perfect disk into a ball,
shreds it and presents it to me with a smile:
“Paratha…bus’-up-shut.” It looks just
like the broken shirt that is named for.

And now the dhalpuri
is ready for rolling and frying.
I do the flipping, while Margaret,
whose son brought me into this kitchen,
rolls. Her sisters laugh. Auntie Lisa
gets out her camera. “Look
at the American girl making roti!”
The oil pricks my skin
as the roti slaps down,
rises up with steam.

The glass table on the back porch
is spread with love--curry chicken and
coconut shrimp, sour pomsite fruits,
ripe figs, sweet basmati rice, lettuce salad.
And roti.

And Grandma tries to eat her napkin.
She scowls at me, “Dis roti bittah.”
“Ma, that’s not roti!” Lisa says,
and takes the napkin. We eat curry
with our fingers, wrap it in layers of roti.
We wag our tongues to cool their burning.

After fifteen minutes times eight,
we leave with a bag of roti, resurrected.

Food and Me #9: Diptych, Christ in two panels

Panel I.

I carried slavery on my shoulder,

weighing down my bones

on the bus ride home from class.

Silence stilled me like a drug

as I stared out the window at the blank

flash of faces passing by.

I plodded home from the bus

under the weight of judgment.

I let myself into the quiet and shade

of our apartment, alone for hours

before Clint would come home.

I sat at the tiny table

and stared at the white wall

for a while, letting sadness billow

and cloud into the room.

But then I remembered there were cherries

slowly dying in the refrigerator.

I drug my heavy limbs to the door

and lifted the cherries out of the cold.

As I pitted them, cutting deep to their bones,

the red dripped down my arms to my elbows

staining my skin. The pits collected in the

metal bowl with the dull rhythm

of a hammer hitting a broken bell.

I washed the red down the sink

to make the dough with a few pulses

of the food processor, the blades

pulverizing butter and flour and water

into a kind of submission.

I pressed them smooth across the counter,

with the heel of my hand

one palm-full at a time.

But I had no patience to wait

for dough to chill. Instead

I formed a ball, and quickly crossed it

with the side of my hand

before the rolling began.

Then I mixed the sour cherries

with sugar and, for the sadness,

I offered up clove, nutmeg and allspice.

The top crust covered them all with

a pricked Latin cross.

Then the heat and the waiting.

I grew restless as the timer ticked

off mounting piles of washed dishes

and folded clean clothes in the waiting

until I ran out of work

and just sat to breathe the burning,

of the flour frying in butter

and solemn incense bubbling

over the cracked crust.

When the door finally clicked open

that night, we ate sadness incarnate.

Mr. Eliot, I would like to introduce you to K'naan.

(Today was a tough day. I've been very undisciplined and I was sinking into a funk of existential despair and malaise. But then I remembered that tonight there was an open mic at Regent. I hadn't written a poem in a very long time, so I figured it was time to claw my way out of the malaise. I've been wanting to write a hip hop inspired rhyming poem for a while since we've been listening to a lot of very good rap recently. So, here it is with love for you all.)


Reading and writing,
Reading and writing,
much like fighting
thunder and lightning
I always lose.
Yet my throat is tightening
as I shake to my shoes,
in a holy act of words:
I choose.


I thought that rhyme was dead
all possibility exhausted
by the men in my Norton’s Anthology.
My professor in college, she
taught me it was about innovation
while I saw gradual stagnation--
language became a still pool
overwrought and uncool.
Then I heard slam and I learned
to fondle the words and their turns
to apply pressure and let them express
the strange power of their native noblesse;
cacophony of origins diverse,
epiphany of courage new in verse.
Perhaps what we have lost
is not the words but their cost:
we must bare our souls
to them without a higher goal
than just to listen and let them flow
But who am I to say I know
anything about words?

Reading and writing
reading and writing
like humans flying
straining and trying,
with waxen wings,
I tremble, crying
in the wind each word sings,
we think we know so many things.

So I’ve set aside poetry to listen
long blinded by the glisten
of fresh black on a blank page.
The silence sends me into a haze
where the words pummel me with force
plebian and coarse,
words that have not been civilized
like I have, black eyed
from the way the world is.
Words that hum and fizz
can only be heard and never seen,
to see is to make them everlasting,
and they are only breath in air
or they would cease to be there
at all. Unless I think of them as waves
pulsing the dusty motes, hardly slaves
to brother light who only theoretically
plays the particle, holding mystery
in the glint of sunset from a snowy peak
in wind-whipped ocean, grey and bleak.
Seen and not word.

Reading and writing,
reading and writing,
fighting and flying,
tightening and crying,
Who am I to say that when I choose
I lose?