100 Food poems

The gods do not interest him, nor their debris, nor their terrible storms: he already knows how a body is made to glow, precursor to neon lights — how hunger is hereditary. Sons should not be haunted except by the dead, and his father is sober now, accepts tribute in silence and Coca-Cola. He is thankful for strong knees, for momentum that lives in the mouth and the hands. Here is the fish with the filigree scales, here is the pot of rice — here, here: the grain of rice that makes the bowl a bowl. Tuna’s blood hardening in the water. Here is the night through which he runs, realizing the floor has turned to tissue paper, tearing into morning. No, the gods do not compel him: he cannot bear the sight of the sun, an open sore — prefers the colors of its setting, how they reflect the ocean’s currents, always giving rise to something new or something he has forgotten. The sky as a table, mounds of rice glazed with soy, gleaming like a display of mackerel, like snow general upon the island’s winter spine. Days parade in their uniform; hearts attack, close markets, open new ones. He teaches his sons to gut fish, does not despair his own hands’ speed: salt bandaging a cut, memory fraying at the edges. Reaching, always — the top of the ladder, buried in light —

my mother put down her knife and fork, pulled her wedding ring from its groove, placing it contemplatively on her middle finger. So natural was the move, so tender, I almost didn’t notice. Five years, she said, five years, once a week, I wrote a letter to your father. And waited until time was like ash on my tongue. Not one letter back, not a single note. She sighed, smiling, the weight gone. This prime rib is really tender, isn’t it? she asked.

Measure two handfuls for a prosperous man. Place in pot and wash by rubbing palms together as if you can’t quite get yourself to pray, or by squeezing it in one fist. Wash several times to get rid of the cloudy water; when you are too high in Heaven, looking down at the clouds, you can’t see what’s precious below. Rinse with cold water and keep enough so that it will barely cover your hand placed on the rice. Don’t use hot water, there are metallic diseases colliding in it. This method of measuring water will work regardless of the size of the pot; if the pot is large, use both hands palms down as if to pat your own belly. Now place on high heat without cover and cook until the water has been boiled away except in craters resembling those of the moon, important in ancient times for growing rice. Now place lid on top and reduce heat to medium, go read your newspaper until you get to the comics, then come back and turn it down to low. The heat has been gradually traveling from the outside to the inside of the rice, giving it texture; a similar thing happens with people, I suppose. Go back to your newspaper, finish the comics, and read the financial page. Now the rice is done, but before you eat, consider the peasant who arcs in leech-infested paddies and who carefully plants the rice seedlings one by one; on this night, you are eating better than he. If you still don’t know how to cook rice, buy a Japanese automatic rice cooker; it makes perfect rice every time!

I Comstock stands in the densely odorous kitchen sniffing Mrs. Yapp’s squab pies. His hunger makes him wide awake and he can imagine Mrs. Yapp twenty years ago when she was a bouncing Evelina and I delight to see them there, Comstock and Mrs. Yapp, in the creaking steaming kitchen of darkly scarred wood beside the great black doubtless clang of the stove being human, in 1836, in the sure conviction that the human had better be fed. The pies bubble up— apples, bacon, onions, brown sugar and breast of pigeon— “A cork’s no good without the bottle, Mrs. Yapp!” She grins and kicks his shin and I turn the page. II It’s actually not a very good novel— over-invested in local color... And the same may be said about thee and me, in 2036, by the Supreme Kakutani. III Oh, once there was a lad named Marky who loved on his bread excessive cheese; oh, to write bright comments in a book’s margins was for him quite larky and his daughter referred to an elephant when she heard him sneeze. Ah, he felt the human mattered keenly, all un-cut and un-dried, though to the gods our tumult may seem a paltry flap— it was a human, after all, wrote Hardy’s “Hap”... This Marky lived a while, my braves, a while and then he died! Honor the cork of Comstock and the pies of Mrs. Yapp.

Sure, she says, why not, we buy the ground lamb from the market we buy parsley, fresh tomatoes, garlic we cut, press, dice, mix make the yeasty dough the night before, kneading it until our knuckles feel the hardness of river beds or rocks in the desert we tell Tante Lola to come with her rolling pins we tell Zaven and Maroush, Hagop and Arpiné to bring their baking sheets we sprinkle the flour on the kitchen table and it is snowing on Ararat we sprinkle the flour and the memory of winter is in our eyes we roll the dough out into small circles pale moons over every empty village Kevork is standing on a chair and singing O my Armenian girl my spirit longs to be nearer Nevrig is warming the oven and a dry desert breeze is skimming over the rooftops toward the sea we are spreading the lahma on the ajoun with our fingers whispering into it the histories of those who have none we are baking them under the heat of the sun the dough crispening so thin and delicate you would swear it is valuable parchment we are taking out and rolling up in our hands and eating and tasting again everything that has already been written into the body.

i was born by a lake, chicken shack, & a church — Common, “The Morning” 1st defense against food deserts. when the whitefolk wouldn't sling us burgers you gave no fuck. stuck your golden-ringed hand into the flour & fixed the bird. you 1st example of black flight. original innovation of deep fry. you beef tallow, city slick & down home migration taste. of course your sauce sweet & burn at the same time. of course you call it mild so whitefolk won't know to fear until it's too late. you no corporate structure, just black business model. they earn the recipe & go make it their own. every cut of crow you throw in the grease is dark meat. the whole shack: shaking, drenched in mild sauce, sweet spirit, baptized.

we’re trying to eliminate the shack. — Kristen Pierce, Harold’s CEO & daughter of founder Harold Pierce when i went to summer camp the white kids had a tendency to shorten names of important institutions. make Northwestern University into NU. international relations into IR. everybody started calling me Nate. before this i imagined myself Nathaniel A. maybe even N. Armstead to big up my granddad. i wrote my whole name on everything. eventually i started unintentionally introducing myself as Nate. it never occurred to me that they could escape the knowing of my name’s real length. as a shorty most the kids in my neighborhood couldn’t say my name. Mick-daniel, Nick-thaniel, MacDonnel shot across the courts like wild heaves toward the basket. the subconscious visual of a chicken shack seems a poor fit for national expansion. Harold’s Chicken is easier, sounds like Columbus’s flag stuck into a cup of cole slaw. shack sounds too much like home of poor people, like haven for weary like building our own.

Oysters adhere to things, no eyes: spat on the smooth curve of a pier they feel shadows and snap shut. The sun wavers while anchored below each distills Tomales Bay, accreting waves within its shell. Voluptuous and cold, Kumamoto trembles on a thin fork, liquefaction of cloud. Rain distorts glass, our tavern submerged all afternoon.

The gooseberry’s no doubt an oddity, an outlaw or pariah even—thorny and tart as any kindergarten martinet, it can harbor like a fernseed, on its leaves’ under- side, bad news for pine trees, whereas the spruce resists the blister rust it’s host to. That veiny Chinese lantern, its stolid jelly of a fruit, not only has no aroma but is twice as tedious as the wild strawberry’s sunburst stem-end appendage: each one must be between-nail-snipped at both extremities. Altogether, gooseberry virtues take some getting used to, as does trepang, tripe à la mode de Caen, or having turned thirteen. The acerbity of all things green and adolescent lingers in it—the arrogant, shrinking, prickling-in-every-direction thorn- iness that loves no company except its, or anyhow that’s what it gets: bristling up through gooseberry ghetto sprawl are braced thistles’ silvery, militantly symmetrical defense machineries. Likewise inseparably en- tangled in the disarray of an uncultivated childhood, where gooseberry bushes (since rooted out) once flourished, is the squandered volupté of lemon- yellow-petaled roses’ luscious flimflam— an inkling of the mingling into one experience of suave and sharp, whose supremely im- probable and far-fetched culinary embodiment is a gooseberry fool. Tomorrow, having stumbled into this trove of chief ingredients (the other being very thickest cream) I’ll demonstrate it for you. Ever since, four summers ago, I first brought you, a gleeful Ariel, the trophy of a small sour handful, I’ve wondered what not quite articulated thing could render magical the green globe of an unripe berry. I think now it was simply the great globe itself’s too much to carry. December 1981

for Alvester James Long after it was necessary, Uncle Vess ate the leavings off the hog, doused them with vinegar sauce. He ate chewy abominations. Then came high pressure. Then came the little pills. Then came the doctor who stole Vess’s second sight, the predication of pig’s blood every fourth Sunday. Then came the stillness of barn earth, no more trembling at his step. Then came the end of the rib, but before his eyes clouded, Uncle Vess wrote down the gospel of barbecue. Chapter one: Somebody got to die with something at some time or another. Chapter two: Don’t ever trust white folk to cook your meat until it’s done to the bone. Chapter three: December is the best time for hog killing. The meat won’t spoil as quick. Screams and blood freeze over before they hit the air. Chapter four, Verse one: Great Grandma Mandy used to say food you was whipped for tasted the best. Chapter four, Verse two: Old Master knew to lock the ham bacon chops away quick or the slaves would rob him blind. He knew a padlock to the smokehouse was best to prevent stealing, but even the sorriest of slaves would risk a beating for a full belly. So Christmas time he give his nasty leftovers to the well behaved. The head ears snout tail fatback chitlins feet ribs balls. He thought gratitude made a good seasoning. Chapter five: Unclean means dirty means filthy means underwear worn too long in summertime heat. Perfectly good food can’t be no sin. Maybe the little bit of meat on ribs makes for lean eating. Maybe the pink flesh is tasteless until you add onions garlic black pepper tomatoes soured apple cider but survival ain’t never been no crime against nature or Maker. See, stay alive in the meantime, laugh a little harder. Go on and gnaw that bone clean.