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I do remember that one Mark.. The peel curling around the N's hand and twirling to the floor in a seductive striptease dance is what I remember best...


Here's one I caught on the New Yorker Poetry Podcast a year or so ago. I liked it so much I remembered it. That's saying a lot.


Eggplant
By Peter Balakian

I loved the white moon circles
and the purple halos,

on a plate as the salt sweat them.

The oil in the pan smoked like bad
days in the Syrian desert—

when a moon stayed all day—

when morning was a purple
elegy for the last friend seen—

when the fog of the riverbank
rose like a holy ghost.

My mother made those white moons sizzle
in some egg wash and salt—

some parsley appeared
from the garden

and summer evenings
came with no memory

but the table with white dishes.

Shining aubergine—black-skinned
beauty, bitter apple.

We used our hands.


.

Speaking of eggplant...this was in Life in the Second Circle, my first full lengther.

Aubadergine

Awakening, I still can taste your flesh,
the soul contained within the supple
skin you wear, voluptuous and purple.
I have been warned you are the path to madness
and yet, despite the crumbs and salt that kiss
and linger on my lips, there is no brutal
morning-after sting; but just the sweet and subtle
whisper of a roasted scrap, a speck of crust;
a bitter lemon and the scent of thyme;
the rapture of the olive grove, and you as mine.

This is in my first book "Of Course," -- page 20 (108pp on Amazon now, $19; type "Allen Tice" in the search line), and I'm cheating fair by including it even though there's no food directly mentioned. The restaurant was on a nearby street & closed for retirement just before Covid-19. With a shock I realize I have no poems about food as such. What's wrong with little Allen? I'm so visual, auditory, aroma, and way tactile centered: food must be ahead. Come to me and I will bite. Back to reality:


               PolyAnna

The waitress at the Metropole Café
Spoke Polish with her eyes, and walked in Greek
With feet that were entirely built in France
On shoes of fine Italian leather under
Subtle Japanese, as was the dance
Behind the menu. What language did she speak?
Sometimes English. Sometimes, I couldn’t say.


PS Stop kraken those jokes!

Correction! On page fifty of the same book, of course, is this in stress-built dactylic hexmeter:


                         Tabletop Thoughts

Luminous kitchen, confecting this morning a savory sunrise.
Silvery pots hum, apple slice wedges are brilliant as half-moons.
Saturday spoons: gold oranges, nutmeg or cinnamon, bread, drink,
Fragrant and bright. This meal is just what I needed, now. Thank you!

This one won a little weekly poetry contest a while back.

What’s for Dinner?

My parents entertain a klatch for dinner.
Ma makes everything from scratch for dinner.

She bakes potato kugel, simmers goulash,
and pan-fries blintzes (a large batch) for dinner.

A mallard leaves her eggs for just a moment.
Gulls snatch a few before they hatch (for dinner).

They’re generous as all get-out, my parents,
inviting even big Sasquatch for dinner.

While lovebug larvae nibble thatch for dinner,
wolves spot a moose they’ll try to catch for dinner.

As Rover cleans up fallen bits of strudel,
my parents stage a shouting match for dinner.

A praying mantis gnaws her lover’s noggin
somewhere in a cabbage patch for dinner.

As ma and pa begin to eat each other,
I slip out of what they unlatch for dinner.

Ginger and Horseradish’s Quarrel

I irritate men’s sinuses and eyes,
making them weep as if they suffer pain,
as if they have been beaten with a cane,
as when they toiled beneath Egyptian skies.

Well, I can feague a sick or hoary horse.
My rhizome in its tuchis makes it hold
its tail up nice and high. However old,
it dances, though my tactic’s cruel, of course.

It is! I’m far more ethical than you.
The Oracle at Delphi said I’m worth
my weight in gold. Folks placed me on the earth
and horses hoofed me for mankind to chew.

Come, let me sample you, a little taste.
You make me weep! And you cause me to cough!
(They ceased their squabbling when I took them off
the counter, blending them into a paste.)

_________

An 1811 dictionary states: “to feague a horse is to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, and formerly, as it is said, a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well. ... In the past, the purpose was often to make an older horse behave like one that was younger, or to temporarily liven up a sick or weakened animal.”

It’s not the most attractive root on the block, but allegedly the Oracle of Delphi said, “The radish is worth its weight in lead, the beet its weight in silver, the horseradish its weight in gold.”

Dinner?

If soy production were to terminate?
Termites beneath a log can be your dinner.
If you’re an entomophagy beginner,
then start with crickets; render them sedate

by placing in the fridge. Or squeeze an ant
into your salad; black ones are the best.
Any bug you judge to be a pest
can make a meal. Don’t tell me that you can’t!

The crunchiness and savor of such bugs
as scorpions delight so many. Chew
them raw, deep-fry them, boil them in stew —
caterpillars, maggots, baby slugs.

Oh, do not shudder! Think of them as candy.
Crush or blend your bugs. No need to squirm
as if that June bug were some kind of germ!
You never know — they just might come in handy.

Ode to a Dairy Product

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese
– G.K. Chesterton

For justifying God’s ways, Stilton
Has the edge on malt and Milton.
No tongue can savor nor extol a
Rarer tang than Gorgonzola.

There is scarcely any food a
Gourmet ranks above aged Gouda.
Olympian deities all swear
They’d swap ambrosia for Gruyere.

Sublimest offspring of the dairy,
Oh, how thy scents and textures vary!
Such range of taste bud paroxysms
From milk and microorganisms!

Thou piquant source of stimulation
For palate and imagination,
Ancestral name of Python Cleese,
And stuff of classic sketch laughs – cheese!

We should never take the name of cheeses in vain. What Chesterton began R L Stevenson developed, until...

Ben Gunn Weeps

“Tell me, shipmates, do you perchance have cheese
aboard this vessel?” When they said they did
he wept a little, and when he was asked
to name his favourite, whispered “Wensleydale”.
And then he dreamed again; this time with hope.

Now he could see the cheese, wrapped in its muslin,
close-crafted by a time-served artisan.
Perhaps a little mould, as they unwrapped it,
would fall like green tears on the wooden board.
Oh, knife or wire? How would they cut his piece;
his piece of eight, his piece of Wensleydale?

He saw it falling painlessly away
from the white, crumbling side of a soft cliff.
He tasted it, one salty nutty lump
at a slow, timeless time. His fingers dabbed
at its imaginary crumbs, anticipating.

But while he was away in Paradise,
the world had turned to show a sadder side;
the predatory short term interest
of the financial sector had changed cheese
till it capered to the hornpipe of novelty,
short shelf-life, arbitrary innovation,
all the cut corners of the swift turnover,
the quest for the discretionary buck.

They brought a pallid slab, shrink-wrapped in plastic,
sleek and damp and beshitten with cranberries.
His toothless mouth rounded into a howl
and he wept with the grief of his great loss.

That's wonderful, Ann. It makes giving up even the shrink-wrapped cranberry chevre on my low sodium diet a bit more palatable - or at least more entertaining.