Which is the first meal, the last poem for this Sunday?

As just mentioned, peanut butter & Seville Orange Marmalade on some fabulous chewy bread.  The poem?

Here is it published in Bay Times, June 27 - July 10, 2013

WORDS FOR PRIDE

Some words slip
off the tongue
all satin & sassy.
Some, proud & elegant.
Some shy, wistful.
Others, confident as sea
splayed upon sand.
Same is true of body
with body, luxuriating.
This deliciousness
has no need for words,
for clothes.
Doesn't exclude lust
or love.

Happy, celebratory Pride Parade Sunday!   & congrats to Betty Sullivan, Co Publisher, Editor Bay Times & Community Grand Marshall of Pride Parade.

Have you noticed how the simple & familiar fire the body and poem?

Define simple & familiar?  Peanut butter & marmalade (Seville Orange to be precise).  Great breakfast food.  Fuel for blogging.  & all the imbedded poems, therein.

What is a buttery avocado taste in a poem?

Let's return to avocados.  Who wouldn't want to.  That sylvan butteriness.  Beguiling color.  What is the equivalent in a poem?  Or in a line?  Or a phrase?  Or a single word?  Or even the pit of a poem?

Much meditation to an avocado.   Similar as time unfolding a poem.  

How do avocados inspire a poem?

The inherent inside color of spring-like green.  Then, their inherent butteriness.   From the exterior, this startles.   A positive startle.  Poems can be like that -- unexpected interior from a seemingly-knowable exterior.

What then is the interior of a poem, you ask?

Keep asking.

How are grains similar to the letters in a poem?

In the precise way that salad is similar to spacing & color-shapes in a poem.  Yes, precisely.

The beginning of a season & which poems will ensue?

Take for example, figs.  A few (not quite ripe) are available -- sporadically.  Soon, time & harvest will remedy.  Figs aplenty.  Yummy.  The poems change to accommodate the shape of women  & their taste.  

Those delicious not-fresh-fig-season marinated dried figs w/fennel will wait their time.

What meal, what poem celebrates Supreme Court Decision on 6/26/13?

Which ever is bright, bold, & beautiful.  Thankfully, there's much to choose.

Bye-bye to DOMA.  Bye-bye to Prop 8.  Hello to healthy & joyful inclusiveness.

What three words bind wax beans and personal/narrative poetry?

My least favorite.  I love vegetables & they love me so why this avoidance of wax beans.  Is it their thin pale, bleached color?  And why am I  giving a wide berth to  personal narrative poetry?   Perhaps, because it is wide & its center rarely savory.  Never spontaneous.

And if I bought some wax beans & tried to reclaim them as a crispy cold salad with stridently-hued tomatoes and/or peppers & a slice or two of avocado.  Perhaps, black olives?

The kitchen is my dictionary of color.  

How does fresh corn anticipate a poem?

It's in the kernels.  Scrape the corn-body, the jewels fall.  The kernels can be eaten raw or lightly, tenderly cooked.  Corn on its cob is yummy roasted.  Or grilled.  The same is true of letters; eaten so many ways.  As many as a poem makes use of word-kernels.

One difference.  One caution. Corn-silk is to avoided.  Word-slk, not.

What's the connection between apricots & blink poems?

They both have a seed -- one visible, one not so.   I consider them both fruit.
What kind of apricots?  Frog Hollow Farm Organic.  Amazingly sweet & juicy.  Four words which describe a blink poem when it, too, tastes good.

What's a blink poem?  Check out a few on the right side of this blog.  Or buy white eating oysters  -- 23 blink poems from CLWN WR BKS, Brooklyn.   These blink poems go especially well with apricots.

How is Hawaiian pizza similar to poetry?

This is the first time I've eaten Hawaiian pizza.  Yes, really, and I make home-made flatbread pizza regularly.  Back to pineapple & bacon; seems an unlikely combination.  But it works.  It's accessible -- which introduces the topic of poetry.

Some poems need to be accessible.  Others by their nature, clothed in fog and yet centered in themselves.  Perhaps, these more accessible by ear or mouth than mind.  

Finding Brussels sprouts & poetry in unlikely places.

Yoshi's/SF is a premier jazz club & Japanese restaurant.  So, on the menu my friend & I spy Brussels sprouts.  We are both keen on this sometimes maligned vegetable.  Our wait-person encouraged us to order them.  We did so and feasted on crispy sprouts, lemon, toasted almonds/cashews in furikake with cauliflower puree.  Oh, yes, the sashimi -- an inspiration.    Often, food is the poem as was the music.  Stephanie Teel's band & special guests, a benefit for Marriage Equality.   Did I mention dancing?

What's the connection between perfectly cooked squash and the incomplete poem?

Definitions.  What's perfect?  What's incomplete?  Is "finished" (another word for "perfect") the opposite of "incomplete?"  A meal or a dish can be incomplete.  Or can be perfect.  For instance,
the mixed squash dish (or is it squashes?) served Saturday evening at the hands of someone I never met but thanked and re-thanked with each forkful was sublime.  Everyone at the gathering agreed.  Strangers  agreeing with strangers, strangers no longer.  & there was no squash left.

By comparison, poems are never complete, never perfect.  But grateful for a chance to communicate.  Grateful for breath.

Anticipating a long beach walk, what meal/what poem will transpire?

Food and poetry both share a weight of the unknown.  A weight of anticipation.  Today it is sunny.  Perhaps the poem will be bright.  Most probably the dinner, nutritious.  Lunch will definitely be sushi.

How does Italian fig cake inspire poetry?

Taste, memorable.  Not overly sweet.  Nutty.  An edge of mystery.  Deliciousness, lingering.  Some poetry is like that.

How is cooking beets every Thursday for a month similar to a poetry practice?

Practice, as in writing poetry.  Well, in both there are oodles of colors and plenty options for the mixing.  Also, when you cut cooked beets, it resembles the practice of writing one line a day.  So many little pieces.  Put several of the lines together, and you might (might) have a poem.  Put many beet bits together and you might (yes, you will) have the makings of a great salad.

For what is poetry, if not salad?