A Full Plate: With a Slab of Verse on the Side, a collection of food-related poems, mentions edibles within each poem, either as main subjects or incidentals.
Eight sections carry a subtitle: Crack O’ Dawn introduces breakfast and early morning poems; Home Cookin’ serves up poems that remind of home and family; Foraging provides fodder that requires deeper thought; Sweet Stuff spills confections and sweetness woven into words; Holiday Stuffing glorifies celebratory seasons; Belly Ache kicks with the pain of unpleasant circumstances; Fellowship Hall delivers church-related incidents; and Tummy Ticklers tingles your mood with situations that provide a belly laugh. A recipe, to whet your appetite, introduces each section.
Mornin' Coffee
At Cody, in the lariat loop of cowboy country, wranglers, edgy for the mustang roundup, hunt down a caffeine jolt or two.
Not at the Bucking Bronc Steak House the Donut n' Sugar Shack, or even the Uptown Cafe.
They align pickup trucks at the Espresso kiosk, slug down Granny's Snicker Doodle atop McDonald's egg McMuffins.
A long haul from chuck wagon flapjacks slapped on tin plates with a half-inch slab of crisp ham by a grizzled old "cookey" in a roughed-up mackinaw; a far cry from steamy brew, hot off the coals, sloshed into metal cups with a tablespoon of sugar. Eons away from Buffalo Bill, himself, with his twirled moustache and weather-beaten slicker.
Pickup buckaroos go for the speedy quick fix. Mustangs can run free while roughriders gulp mornin' coffee handed through a runty window by a bleached blonde in a snug shouting-pink Espresso t-shirt.
New Son-in-law
She visits daughter, new son-in-law, in first home.
He guts, then cuts a bird at the kitchen sink, “Sage hen,” he says.
“Roasted one once,” I tell him, “Bad. Cat wouldn’t even eat it.”
That night we eat pasta. Son-in-law, who does all the cooking, leaves meal concoction to wife.
New son-in-law, new mother-in-law, fowl beginning.
gusto’s gone
along with last hug car door slam thrown kiss
no bickering over bathroom no sand and grit on floor no swimsuits on deck rail
grilled burgers finished sausage and biscuits eaten waffles a lingering memory
counter’s clean bathroom’s dry toss pillows in place
grandchildren have gone home and oh the dreadful silence Manure or Chocolate? When a bronc saddle demands more than a grand in loose change, Ma, not given to handouts, spurs calf-poke son to make truffles.
“Truffles? Ain’t no sissy girl!”
Sissy or not, he molds truffles at night. Blends sage, mocha, satiny beer extracts into jillions of mouth-watering tidbits.
Lured by flavor, the damnable smoothness, summer artisans, hawg bikers, bronc busters, who don’t know truffles from turds, say,
“Hey, pack me a mess o’ them highfalutin truffles.”
Manure by day, chocolate by night, and soon the saddle’s a done deal. Buckaroo/chocolatier’s off to France
for feistier flavors, tangier twists to bait customers, fatten his strongbox, maybe an even spiffier saddle next time.
festivities
kin celebrate over turkey-laden plates while holiday snow falls like eider down to fluff terrain into velvety softness
cousins carouse in gilded candleglow yawn into bedtime under puffy comforters
outside antelope wade knee-deep hindrance paw frozen ground to bare a feast of iced sage
then gouge a bed into the numbing tomb of winter
Published in WYOPoets 2 (Fall 1999):2
bad bad cookies
gotta tackle the cookies bad bad cookies
now i know chocolate chip peanut butter and brownies
but these cookies create a history invade valuable computer space
defy security naughty cookies
gotta get ’em gotta kill ’em bad bad cookies
Published in Ella J. Cvancara, Blame Emily (Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing Company, 2008):120.
“You oughta see her,”
say old-timers down at the Home Plate café. “Not one bit like Old Reverend’s Emma, corset-laced, swift with her lip and fat in the hip. Never seen a preacher’s wife like this new ’un.”
“From San-fran-cisco, bleached up like Goldie Hawn. Tight black jeans sit on ’er like skin on sin. Her nose’s got a honest-to-jehovah DIAMOND stickin’ out the side. “She won’t last,” they coffee-nod agreement.
Saturday nights, she hammers Neal Sedaka on the Coffee House piano, taps chunky-booted rhythm, sings of “Sweet Jesus” a rockin’-and-a-rollin’, long hair flip-flaps ’cross that diamond.
At the parsonage, toys litter shag, crumbs butter the table, week-old caffeine pools in Starbucks’ coffee mugs surrounded by left-over banana peels. Old-timers shake their heads. “Never seen a preacher’s wife like that ’un.”
When cancer strikes Nellie Johnson, her funds run low, her friends run out, and Nellie sits alone ’til young preacher’s wife bangs at her door. “Brought you a milk shake, a buncha daffodils, Don’t worry ’bout those bills anymore.”
Old-timers shake their heads anew, bug-eyed over the Coffee House fund raiser the preacher’s wife spearheads to allay Nellie’s outlay. “She’s somethin’. Ain’t never seen a preacher’s wife like that ’un before– whirls like the wind–from San-fran-cisco to boot–you oughta see her,”
they say down at the Home Plate.
landed
they stretch legs in bulkhead seats long flight from Minneapolis to Ft. Meyers
he relaxed in loafers no socks reads Minneapolis Tribune she low cut tank top flip-flops works crossword puzzle
’til beverage cart makes rounds
he orders orange juice and vodka away toes the newspaper she orders orange juice and vodka away goes the crossword puzzle
chit-chat time
she orders another vodka he orders diet coke she orders still another vodka he orders another diet coke
tete-a-tete’s animated
heads lean together he orders her another vodka she moves closer right hand caresses his thigh her laughter bubbles
he’s landed
Published in Voicings From the High Country 11 (Casper, WY 2003):19.
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