Ode to Katie’s Biscuits
Praise biscuits that rise as high as heaven
and melt, soft, in your mouth. Katie shares
a few hints: you need butter, cold butter,
more than you think, to mix flaky dough.
And if you handle the batter too roughly--
well, I’m sorry, but you’ll end up with bricks.
Kate’s one tough cookie, who bakes her famous
walnut cranberry pie with her right hand,
crafts a lavender gin cocktail with the left,
and, eyes in the back of her head, ensures
women stay safe at her downtown LA bar.
She’ll 86 you if you make trouble, always
with that megawatt smile that lights up
my son. Every so often, she tells us
that she loves us. One day she may reveal
her entire biscuit recipe—oh, praise
that day and praise the sweet life she and my son
have built together, brick by solid brick.
Lemon Meringue Pie
I worry about my daughter, her sorrow
the deep green of our olive tree bent
in pounding rain, the rain we thought
would never arrive,
her sorrow dark as the licorice
that stained her mouth as a little girl,
Maybe she lived by the sea too long --
too much water, not enough earth.
Maybe I can ride the wind
to her far-away blue kitchen,
and together we will buy lemons,
measure the ingredients for lemon meringue pie,
her favorite, and mine, and her grandmother’s,
the grandmother she never met.
My daughter will squeeze the lemons
and the juice will sting her gnawed hands.
But she will run cool water to release
the pain, her sadness rising like steam
from her grandmother’s old kettle.
We’ll brew peppermint tea,
inhale the zest of the baking pie.
The coyote lurks outside,
but for just one moment,
my daughter hears her grandmother’s
sharp laugh under the rain.
Anthony’s Peaches
We rise early on Saturday mornings to scout
the best produce at Alemany Farmers Market--
blueberries from Rainbow Farms, popping with flavor,
earthy Early Girl tomatoes at Two Dog Farms.
But it’s Galpin Farms and Anthony’s peaches
we adore, golden-red, capturing the sun.
Anthony and Lisa are high school sweethearts,
married more than twenty years, and we can taste the love.
A family working their twenty-five acres, touching
each peach only once, tree to market, picking and packing.
Sixteen varieties of stone fruit in summer. Satsumas in winter.
They work the markets with their kids, nephews, nieces.
We chat about rain and heat, aging moms, football, graduations.
At home, we lay the fruit on a paper towel. This week
it’s the Angela (my favorite) and we can’t wait to taste that luscious
tang, the best peaches ever, the farm’s energy, the summer’s light.
Angie Minkin is a San Francisco-based, Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. A volunteer poetry reader with The MacGuffin, her work appears in that journal, Rattle, Unbroken Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, Rise Up Review, Birdy, Stirring, Westchester Review, and several others. Angie’s chapbook, Balm for the Living, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. She is also the coauthor of Dreams and Blessings: Six Visionary Poets, published in 2020 by Blue Light Press. Her poems also appear in Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets that Live Here, published by Blue Light Press in 2021. Angie travels to Oaxaca, Mexico whenever possible. www.angieminkin.com
Praise biscuits that rise as high as heaven
and melt, soft, in your mouth. Katie shares
a few hints: you need butter, cold butter,
more than you think, to mix flaky dough.
And if you handle the batter too roughly--
well, I’m sorry, but you’ll end up with bricks.
Kate’s one tough cookie, who bakes her famous
walnut cranberry pie with her right hand,
crafts a lavender gin cocktail with the left,
and, eyes in the back of her head, ensures
women stay safe at her downtown LA bar.
She’ll 86 you if you make trouble, always
with that megawatt smile that lights up
my son. Every so often, she tells us
that she loves us. One day she may reveal
her entire biscuit recipe—oh, praise
that day and praise the sweet life she and my son
have built together, brick by solid brick.
Lemon Meringue Pie
I worry about my daughter, her sorrow
the deep green of our olive tree bent
in pounding rain, the rain we thought
would never arrive,
her sorrow dark as the licorice
that stained her mouth as a little girl,
Maybe she lived by the sea too long --
too much water, not enough earth.
Maybe I can ride the wind
to her far-away blue kitchen,
and together we will buy lemons,
measure the ingredients for lemon meringue pie,
her favorite, and mine, and her grandmother’s,
the grandmother she never met.
My daughter will squeeze the lemons
and the juice will sting her gnawed hands.
But she will run cool water to release
the pain, her sadness rising like steam
from her grandmother’s old kettle.
We’ll brew peppermint tea,
inhale the zest of the baking pie.
The coyote lurks outside,
but for just one moment,
my daughter hears her grandmother’s
sharp laugh under the rain.
Anthony’s Peaches
We rise early on Saturday mornings to scout
the best produce at Alemany Farmers Market--
blueberries from Rainbow Farms, popping with flavor,
earthy Early Girl tomatoes at Two Dog Farms.
But it’s Galpin Farms and Anthony’s peaches
we adore, golden-red, capturing the sun.
Anthony and Lisa are high school sweethearts,
married more than twenty years, and we can taste the love.
A family working their twenty-five acres, touching
each peach only once, tree to market, picking and packing.
Sixteen varieties of stone fruit in summer. Satsumas in winter.
They work the markets with their kids, nephews, nieces.
We chat about rain and heat, aging moms, football, graduations.
At home, we lay the fruit on a paper towel. This week
it’s the Angela (my favorite) and we can’t wait to taste that luscious
tang, the best peaches ever, the farm’s energy, the summer’s light.
Angie Minkin is a San Francisco-based, Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. A volunteer poetry reader with The MacGuffin, her work appears in that journal, Rattle, Unbroken Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, Rise Up Review, Birdy, Stirring, Westchester Review, and several others. Angie’s chapbook, Balm for the Living, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. She is also the coauthor of Dreams and Blessings: Six Visionary Poets, published in 2020 by Blue Light Press. Her poems also appear in Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets that Live Here, published by Blue Light Press in 2021. Angie travels to Oaxaca, Mexico whenever possible. www.angieminkin.com
