Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 11-04-2003, 06:24 AM
Kate Benedict's Avatar
Kate Benedict Kate Benedict is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: New York, NY, USA
Posts: 2,196
Post

Julie Stoner writes:

There seem to be a lot of cooks in the 'Sphere, and now that we've entered of the Season of Overindulgence (Halloween candy, football tailgate parties, Thanksgiving feasts, holiday festivities, New Year's fitness resolutions), folks may be inspired to create. Could we have a culinary-themed FunExcise, please?

----------------

So put on your glutton's bib and write some sweet or savory verses on the subject of food, glorious food: cooking it, scarfing it, regretting it, acclaiming it, burning it...whatever inspires.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 11-04-2003, 11:17 AM
Lightning Bug Lightning Bug is offline
Member
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Ga., USA
Posts: 1,436
Post

*Politely ignores Kate's faux pas*

Here's one that's gotten stuck for an ending, but it's my only food poem, except my Vampire Series, and probably not many of you consume blood. Btw, did anyone notice in Poet's Market 2004, there's a publisher that specifies, "No Vampires"? I swear it's not my fault [I've never submitted any]!! I didn't even know there WAS any other vampire poetry before, and suddenly, I can't submit it! Oh, well, it's only two pieces in the series, anyway....

***

Oh, this doesn't have a title yet:

In this beautiful world, there are wonderful things:
children laughing, and puppies, and Autumns and Springs;
like the snowy-capped Rockies that mount to the sky,
or the twinkle you see in a prostitute’s eye.
There are joys of the senses and joys of the mind,
and the blessing you feel when you’re randomly kind.
I am sure there’s a lot to be said for all these,
but, for me, every night I get down on my knees
and I thank the Creator - I do this because,
I have tasted Penelope Glass’s cheese straws.

It is hard to say which of her straws I like better –
the ones made with bleu cheese, or zesty, sharp cheddar.
Suffice it to say, both can make a heart flutter?
(a rumor around says she makes her own butter)

The butter, cheese, flour, and some Worcestershire sauce
are the things she’ll admit she puts into her straws.
But, I peeked in her bowl, and, God make me a leper,
if she didn’t slip in there … a half cayenne pepper!!!

Then she blended the mixture and kneaded it denser
and squeezed the dough out of a star-shaped dispenser.
She cut them in pieces, and baked them a while
then she pulled the batch out, in her flamboyant style.

She flourished a straw that was perfect and golden
and gave it to me, (and I’m truly beholden) ..........

[to be continued, perhaps]



[This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited November 25, 2003).]
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 11-04-2003, 05:18 PM
Janet Kenny Janet Kenny is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Posts: 15,574
Post

I Loved the cheese straws.
This is an old one and certainly could use a little tweaking. here it is anyway:

Cooking For Sigmund

When a psychiatrist comes here to dine
what do I give him to eat?
If I try too hard he
will catalogue me
as someone who wants to compete.

If I put out a spread of cheeses and bread
he’ll think that I wish him to know
that I’m quite unimpressed
with my medical guest
and assume it is all just a show.

Shall I serve fish or meat or some pasta complete
with a vegetable sauce of complexity
which might seem laid back
and along the right track
but the devil is what the course next should be?

If I don’t make dessert, could it possibly hurt
would he read any motives in that?
A refusal of sex
and an eating complex,
with a morbid fear of getting fat?

So I’ll proffer a plate of asparagus fronds
with some anchovies, then a smoked trout
with haricot beans,
next some baked nectarines,
then I’ll show the smug analyst out.


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 04, 2003).]
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 11-05-2003, 08:58 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,306
Post

Ah, Bugsy, your line 4 is immortal. And Janet, thanks for the reminder that sometimes those guys in the white coats aren't chefs.

Here's my contribution to this potluck. (Sadly, another autobiographical piece.)

To-phooey

Tofu, you're the Prince of Lies,
forever trying to disguise
yourself as chicken, pork, or beef.
I can’t suspend my disbelief.

Tofu, you’re the Prince of Lies.
Although you fool my husband’s eyes,
his tongue recoils from you to hiss,
“Honey, what the HELL is this?”

Tofu, you’re the Prince of Lies:
“The kids will get a big surprise
when you reveal you’ve fed them tofu.”
Whose kids are those? Mine always knowfu.

Tofu, I’ll waste no more tries.
I’m giving up. I’m getting wise.
My household always will despise
you, tofu. You're the Prince of Lies.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 11-05-2003, 09:21 AM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Plum Island, MA; Santa Fe, NM
Posts: 11,161
Post

This one isn't exactly new - it was workshopped here over a year ago, and subsequently made it into <u>Medicinal Purposes</u> - but it's my only appropriate foodie piece, and maybe some of the newer guys haven't seen it.

<u>The Love of Sushi Sue</u>

I lived near Tokyo’s Hama-Zushi bar
those years I was an all-night sybarite;
would start off there with dabs of caviar
and sweet live shrimp, to set the appetite -
then grab a cab to narrow streets of tight-
stacked clubs to hunt for food and girls galore;
and often wander home about first light
to meet Old Hama, sweeping out his door.
He’d eye what I had caught the night before,
but knew my true love was an artful blow
fish broth, or chunks of fatty tuna, raw,
caressed with strands of gleaming monkfish roe.
Good food was all I worshipped and revered
and women, although quite amusing, interfered.

In time, the real-life girlfriends disappeared,
replaced by fantasies of Sushi Sue
who, naked as a salmon, commandeered
my reveries - slim sushi ingenue
enshrined behind Old Hama’s bleached bamboo.
She worked like nude quicksilver, with a blade
in each small hand - Hama’s fish swam through
her fingers and in seconds were fileted -
enlaced with rice and seaweed; then arrayed
with fat carp’s heads and gleaming silver bream,
sea urchin eggs, fresh squid and trout; displayed
as backdrop for a slick, wet ocean dream -
but when my hungry hand reached for her breast
Sue cried, “A sushi girl cannot make love to guest”.

Although all that was years ago, the quest
remains. My thoughts have never wandered far
from Hama’s pickled prawns with lemon zest,
the earthy taste of slow-baked arctic char -
or Sushi Sue’s small room behind the bar -
where I now nibble her hirame, coax
the sweetness from her uni, feel a star
in me explode as she prepares and strokes
my ana-kyu with whispered private jokes.
At last, with sake sips and salty nips,
I polish off a banquet that evokes
a sigh - and mirugai - from parted lips.
“I’m glad that you like raw fish,” she will coo,
as I finally taste the love of Sushi Sue.


<u>Glossary

hirame:</u> Halibut. Often served as a sashimi style first course, with a ponzu dipping sauce (lime juice, soy sauce and sake). Good hirame should be so fresh and sliced so thinly that you can see through it, and detect the pattern on a plate; and it is supposedly ordered as a first course to enable a gourmet foodie to quickly evaluate the sushi shop.

<u>uni:</u> Sea urchin gonads.

<u>ana-kyu:</u> A conical, hand-made sushi specialty of rice, cucumber strips and ocean eel, rolled in seaweed and topped with a thick, sweet sauce. This is much more elegant than the tight “California roll” style popular in the States, and superb ana-kyu is regarded as one of the criteria of a fine, traditional sushi establishment. If you want to impress the guys (or girl - I almost forgot) behind the counter - and you’re in Japan on an expense account - order one. (Warning - it’s impossible to eat the thing without having the dark brown sauce drip through the bottom of the cone and down your arm. Ana-kyu devotees are distinguished by stains of honor on their wrists and forearms, not unlike the nicotine-drenched fingers of post-war French intellectuals.)

<u>mirugai:</u> A large clam. Analogous to a New England quahog.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited November 05, 2003).]
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 11-05-2003, 01:07 PM
Janet Kenny Janet Kenny is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Posts: 15,574
Post

Another early and twisted view of food set in a non-sushi zone. Fine poem Michael.
Julie, my husband would love your husband.


Anorexia. Don't just blame the magazines--blame the country aunties:


Anorexia


When I was young the lumpy women
frightened me badly. They bulged above
and they bulged below the stiff belts, trimming
their dowdy dresses. At the stove
they made huge dinners for family members
and fed the infants clamouring constantly;
custards and scones, and every December
gargantuan banquets, catering instantly
for every caller who dropped in casually;
placidly leading the life of servitude,
scrubbing and peeling and seemingly glad to be
always reliving life’s pattern with certitude.
Corset departments in country emporia
filled me with terror, the frightful restrictions
of bones and hooks, caused mounting hysteria
and an increasingly deep conviction
that this life was not what I wanted.
The prospect of lumpy inelegance frightened me,
everywhere domesticity taunted.
No other model around, enlightened me.

I saw thin women who dined in places
where beautiful clothes and music were normal,
and all of these women had handsome faces
and talked entertainingly in an informal
but clever way, and instead of waiting
on men, it was men who danced attendance
on women, thus clearly demonstrating
that thinness was certainly in the ascendance.

Magazines and television
all contribute, but my mother
was where I started the grim revision
of how I seemed in the eyes of another.


scones=biscuits

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 05, 2003).]
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 11-05-2003, 01:10 PM
nyctom nyctom is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: New York, NY USA
Posts: 3,699
Post

The Cranky Dieter

Poems about food?
I'm not in the mood.
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 11-05-2003, 01:54 PM
Jerry Glenn Hartwig Jerry Glenn Hartwig is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Fairfield, Ohio
Posts: 5,509
Post

A quick little ditty

O crusty Kugelhupf!

Those blanched chopped almonds in the mold
(hard bottoms slick with grease}
the thought of them makes my mouth perspire
and my tummy's rumbling increase.

I fling your batter about the place
when Mom lets me lick the spoon
which keeps my hair in better shape
than Monsieur Vidal Sasoon.

Your aromatic lemon-scent
then wafts from mother's oven;
those raisins make me regular.
I'll eat them by the dozen.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 11-06-2003, 06:53 AM
Lisajoy Adams Lisajoy Adams is offline
New Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Canton, Michigan 48187
Posts: 36
Post

Janet,
As a "rehabilitated" anorexic, I identified with your descriptions of what this disease looks like. The food preparations for everyone but ones self, the impossible comparisons to the perfection of media women. If I am understanding your words correctly, are you suggesting that the mother in fact had the most discerning and disappointed eyes? Maybe this was a factor but not the sole cause from my personal experience. Anorexia is a disorder about control, starving is an attempt to feel in control, when our perception of the world is that it is out of control. There are many dynamics to this disorder, thank you for opening the closet door and exposing quite literally this skeleton. Lisajoy
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 11-06-2003, 05:50 PM
Janet Kenny Janet Kenny is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Posts: 15,574
Post

[
Lisajoy
I'm so sorry that you suffered. This is not about the redeeming mother I'm afraid. It's a more-or-less feminist escape from mother. I loved my mum but her family were all farmer's wives. My father's family were all thin achievers. It's a betrayal of my mother if anything. We all have to find our separate ways out of the maze. I hope all resolved well for you.
very best
Janet

Tom
Made me smile!
Janet


Jerry
Kugelhupf is worthy of at least one poem.

Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 06, 2003).]
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,395
Total Threads: 21,824
Total Posts: 270,665
There are 2699 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online