Cooking Our Cornbread
Your cast-iron skillet’s heating and my
cornmeal is self-rising as I
stir in flour, dribble butter-
milk until it’s ready for the
egg and then I pour my bacon
grease into the batter that I
beat a little more before I’m
loading in your skillet what we’re
sticking in the oven and the
smell we’re making permeates the
countdown
to the
moment
when the
buzzer
sounds!
And what . . . we made . . . is done.
Ode to the Blood Turnip in Sonnet Form
You were planted in Hanging Gardens by
9th century Babylonian Kings.
Your root contains geosmin, petrichor
smell of freshly plowed soil after spring rain.
You’re red with cancer-killing betalains,
nutritious and antioxidant-rich,
a tryptophan and betain medicine
that stimulates feeling of well-being.
Aphrodite ate you for a reason –
your boron increases our sex hormones.
You ornament erotic frescoes in
brothels buried by Mt. Vesuvius.
Iron-rich, sugar-sweet, earthy surprise –
for beta vulgaris I have blood in my eyes.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Gravity of the Thing, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. His awards include the League of Minnesota Poets Award, the Maine Poets Society Award, and the Chaffin/Kash Prize of the Kentucky State Poetry Society
Your cast-iron skillet’s heating and my
cornmeal is self-rising as I
stir in flour, dribble butter-
milk until it’s ready for the
egg and then I pour my bacon
grease into the batter that I
beat a little more before I’m
loading in your skillet what we’re
sticking in the oven and the
smell we’re making permeates the
countdown
to the
moment
when the
buzzer
sounds!
And what . . . we made . . . is done.
Ode to the Blood Turnip in Sonnet Form
You were planted in Hanging Gardens by
9th century Babylonian Kings.
Your root contains geosmin, petrichor
smell of freshly plowed soil after spring rain.
You’re red with cancer-killing betalains,
nutritious and antioxidant-rich,
a tryptophan and betain medicine
that stimulates feeling of well-being.
Aphrodite ate you for a reason –
your boron increases our sex hormones.
You ornament erotic frescoes in
brothels buried by Mt. Vesuvius.
Iron-rich, sugar-sweet, earthy surprise –
for beta vulgaris I have blood in my eyes.
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Gravity of the Thing, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. His awards include the League of Minnesota Poets Award, the Maine Poets Society Award, and the Chaffin/Kash Prize of the Kentucky State Poetry Society
