Kitchen Angel
Beneath the glossy purple skin, the flesh resists
my knife; I salt the eggplant slices to draw out
the bitter beads, chop onions, thinking of your
square hands which moved like a meditation.
My eyes water: is it the onions or am I really
crying as I remember you pouring a liver puree
rolling your eyes as we laughed because it looked
so much like shit. I want to laugh with you again.
I slice peppers knowing you would have done it
with more care; like when you would nestle chicken
thighs next to sausages, tenderly as putting a baby to bed.
I remember those winter Sundays when you would
cook for hours, while Arnold Palmer your hero,
played golf on a tiny television perched on the counter,
how the murmur of the announcer, the sedate clapping
seemed to applaud your artistic arrangement of an orange.
Sometimes I glimpse you, father, revenant in my kitchen,
body like air. I try to talk to you but, just as when you were
alive, you say little, but at the stove, I feel your hand feather
my shoulder and hear you whisper, “Add a little salt.”
**
Published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Winter 2013/Spring 2014 issue.
Beneath the glossy purple skin, the flesh resists
my knife; I salt the eggplant slices to draw out
the bitter beads, chop onions, thinking of your
square hands which moved like a meditation.
My eyes water: is it the onions or am I really
crying as I remember you pouring a liver puree
rolling your eyes as we laughed because it looked
so much like shit. I want to laugh with you again.
I slice peppers knowing you would have done it
with more care; like when you would nestle chicken
thighs next to sausages, tenderly as putting a baby to bed.
I remember those winter Sundays when you would
cook for hours, while Arnold Palmer your hero,
played golf on a tiny television perched on the counter,
how the murmur of the announcer, the sedate clapping
seemed to applaud your artistic arrangement of an orange.
Sometimes I glimpse you, father, revenant in my kitchen,
body like air. I try to talk to you but, just as when you were
alive, you say little, but at the stove, I feel your hand feather
my shoulder and hear you whisper, “Add a little salt.”
**
Published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Winter 2013/Spring 2014 issue.