Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen
A coven of cooks chop
the savories with their blade
sharp fingernails, dice night
shades, vegetables grown in
root cellars, dark corners,
gather the bulbs that sprouted
tumors, cancerous growths,
bulbous as chancres, slick as
limestone drips in underground
caves. On the cast iron wood
stove, metal plates are heated
until they glow, aromatic oils
added until they burn, exuding
a thin black mist as a breath of
musk from coal fed chutes,
scalding the air, blistering milk
based paint on dungeon thick
kitchen walls. Aroused by
emanating scents, cloaked
familiars answer the summons
the need for fresh meat brings,
toppling preserves from pantry
shelves as they come, spilling
pickling brines, off-color food stuff,
once organic, now discolored a sickly
white by formaldehyde. The monk’s
hooded cooks apprise the late
arrivals, sprinkle salt on the tails
of giant fowl, string garlic among
the horns of cleft heads of half-men,
half-goats, finally drawing a curtain
of blood between them and the feast,
separating that place, they call
the dining room from a common
space, the oft stained killing ground.
Our Lady of the Kitchen Appliances
has razored out all the center
pages of the “New Joy of Cooking”
from vegetables to game, and sewn in
the text of a “New Joy of Sex”
listening to Drop Kick Murphys as she
hand mashes potatoes, muddles fruit,
adds spice to stuffing, strips layers
from a leg of lamb, rubbing the bare
flesh with herbs, spiking with garlic,
preparing a feast, she can’t wait to
shove inside the oven, boils extra water
until the kitchen is like a steam bath,
clothes clinging to her sweating body,
finally hot enough, she can really
begin to cook.
Alan Catlin has been making the poetry scene since the 70's. His most recent full-length books include Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell from Roadside Press and Last Call for Lazarus from Impspired.
A coven of cooks chop
the savories with their blade
sharp fingernails, dice night
shades, vegetables grown in
root cellars, dark corners,
gather the bulbs that sprouted
tumors, cancerous growths,
bulbous as chancres, slick as
limestone drips in underground
caves. On the cast iron wood
stove, metal plates are heated
until they glow, aromatic oils
added until they burn, exuding
a thin black mist as a breath of
musk from coal fed chutes,
scalding the air, blistering milk
based paint on dungeon thick
kitchen walls. Aroused by
emanating scents, cloaked
familiars answer the summons
the need for fresh meat brings,
toppling preserves from pantry
shelves as they come, spilling
pickling brines, off-color food stuff,
once organic, now discolored a sickly
white by formaldehyde. The monk’s
hooded cooks apprise the late
arrivals, sprinkle salt on the tails
of giant fowl, string garlic among
the horns of cleft heads of half-men,
half-goats, finally drawing a curtain
of blood between them and the feast,
separating that place, they call
the dining room from a common
space, the oft stained killing ground.
Our Lady of the Kitchen Appliances
has razored out all the center
pages of the “New Joy of Cooking”
from vegetables to game, and sewn in
the text of a “New Joy of Sex”
listening to Drop Kick Murphys as she
hand mashes potatoes, muddles fruit,
adds spice to stuffing, strips layers
from a leg of lamb, rubbing the bare
flesh with herbs, spiking with garlic,
preparing a feast, she can’t wait to
shove inside the oven, boils extra water
until the kitchen is like a steam bath,
clothes clinging to her sweating body,
finally hot enough, she can really
begin to cook.
Alan Catlin has been making the poetry scene since the 70's. His most recent full-length books include Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell from Roadside Press and Last Call for Lazarus from Impspired.
