Moss Piglet (July 2022) The Food Issue

July 2022

MOSS PIGLET

conniehenkefineart.com

Connie Henke / Farmers Market 1

MOSS PIGLET The Food Issue

On our Cover

An Uncomfortable Truth

by John Douglas

johndouglasart.blogspot.com mostlyartysomewhatfarty.blogspot.com

Back Cover

Donut #1

by Kim Duddridge @monstar.mash

Background image by 8926 at Pixabay

Editor & Publisher John Bloner, Jr. @juniorbarnesart

Contributors Linda Aschbrenner · Mary Bamborough · Junior Barnes · Robert Beveridge Dianne Lee Blomberg · Jon C. Bolton · Cathryn Cofell · Barbara Crooker Dan D’Amario · Linda D’Amario · John Douglas · Kim Duddridge Katherine Edgren · Lane Ellen · PM Fallon · Wes Fallon · Laura Garfinkel Gabby Gilliam · Michael Hafner · Mark Hardy · Connie Henke · Ronnie Hess Maryann Hurtt · Karla Huston · Missy Isely-Poltrock · Jeffrey Johannes Bill Karberg · Jim Landwehr · Annette Langlois Grunseth · Karen Mathis CJ Muchhala · Mary Nelson · Janice O'Mahony · Diana Raab · Arian Rana Dian Ritter · Peter Ritter · Ruth Sabath Rosenthal · Carol Lee Saffioti Hughes Kelly Sargent · Katrina Serwe · Judith Shapiro · Carrie Sherrill · Peter Sherrill Pat Snyder Hurley · Julia C. Spring · Katrin Talbot · Ashi Tara · Cynthia Trenshaw John Twiggs · Susan Twiggs · Philip Venzke · Dina Walker · Sheillah Walsh Phyllis Wax · Ed Werstein · Joan Wiese Johannes

krazines.com

Subscriptions available | info@krazines.com Follow us on Facebook and join our Facebook group Rights to all of the work, except work in the public domain, is held by the individual visual artists and authors whose work is represented in this issue. Please submit inquiries to info@krazines.com.

Photo by Jeffrey Johannes

Memories Served Here

by John Bloner, Jr., Editor/Publisher, Moss Piglet

If you bring this month's issue close to your nose, you might catch an aroma of calzone, the fragrance from a lavender farm, or the stinging scent of sizzled garlic. As you turn over its pages, your eyes may mist with childhood memories of picking blueberries, devouring pancakes on Sunday mornings, and savoring the taste of Swedish meatballs while watching Lawrence Welk. Food is more than sustenance, as Proust teaches us. Just as the taste of madeleine transports the narrator of his novel to bygone years, the smell or sapidity of edible fare becomes our portal, as well, returning us to kitchens, dining rooms, restaurants, and berry patches of long ago.

The June issue of Moss Piglet isn't fast food. It's best when savored, not scarfed down.

Its visual art, prose and poems contain and celebrate lifetimes. Carol Lee SaffiotiHughes recounts a New Year's Eve tradition of making fry bread. Jim Landwehr teaches us to speak Minnesotan, where casseroles are called hot dish. (Ya, you betcha!)

Thanks to her friend, Eddie, Karla Huston lets us know that sauerkraut is not only good with brats, but in cake batter, too. And in his paean to pizza, Ed Werstein channels William Carlos Williams to rejoice in a pie's final slice, served cold.

While this edition is rich in images and words, it's non-fattening nonetheless, so bon appétit!

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Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.

Song of Solomon 7:12 (KJV)

Elsie E. Lower, Dec. 18, 1909

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Pancakes

by Cathryn Cofell

Aunt Jemima and water a griddle hot as swing a Sunday morning between the paper and church the blue ¼ cup her dipper the yellow mix falling spreading like a ripple the awkward saucers turning brown like children’s backs in the sun two plastic plates poised to cradle the steaming batter babies the air singed with sugar and burn the man at the table alone and eating while they’re hot slathering butter from a stick syrup from a jar in the pantry she at the stove pouring and flipping the perfect owl eyes him already done and pushed back and gone her fingering the one that went wrong.

She eats it alone like a sandwich without maple or chair leans against the cool stove leaves no evidence because some things like pancakes deserve a second chance.

Previously published in Tiny Little Crushes, a chapbook by Cathryn Cofell. It also appeared in Prose Toad.

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www.cathryncofell.com

@missy1111girl

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8 Soft Bread (top), Moldy Bread (bottom) / Sheillah Walsh

@sheillahwalsh

Sheillah Walsh / White Bread (top), Bread of Life (bottom) 9

Kneading the Dough

by Carol Lee Saffioti Hughes

Every New Year's Eve my Italian American father would follow his parents' tradition and fry the bread.

Zippoli he would call it we never learned how to spell it he spoke English at home.

He would bring home frozen dough from the pizza place it stood in for my grandfather's made from scratch.

A railroad engineer grit and oil under his fingernails he would scrub them so that he could punch down the dough flatten it, roll it, tend it cover it with a checkered towel place the bowl oh so cautiously in a warmed oven take the role of his father before him and we would have Italian fry bread.

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In an Italian Catholic house traditions count but sooner than later I could no longer look at a day off for Columbus Day as a gifta rift in my family genes.

When I queried did you know that guy cut off the ear of a Taino child sent the child back to his village and did you know we aren't the only ones who eat fry bread? he raised his hand to swat me.

He didn't, but I knew not to mention it again.

I didn't in the house but made sure I spoke the stories to my students the truth sizzling like dough in hot oil.

He's gone now and the oil is just coming right-you test with a small rolled up snippit of dough when it floats the oil is ready.

I cheat and use frozen dough just like my pop did and sometimes my Native friends are with me and I say do you know I grew up eating fry bread?

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12 Untitled / Ashi Tara

@ashi_tara_artist

After the ax sounds, the ax sound lingers.

The rooster shakes out blood from his proud neck.

And feathers, wet, cling to my fingers.

2.

Says Dad: “The picnic table is a wreck.

The blood will drip and only stain the grass.”

I know that birds will never land to peck.

by Philip Venzke

Crow In An Empty Morning Image by prettysleepy at Pixabay

1.

3.

And now we chant the chicken pluckers mass: “Pluck the feathers, pluck the feathers real fast.

Flame the feathered hairs off its pimpled ass.”

4.

Says Mom: “This cool morning will never last.

We must gut each before we reach midday.”

I push my hand into the chicken’s past.

5.

The way chicken grease on a fire plays And then flames die and charcoal lingers And I recall my feathered, flightless ways.

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14 The Garden / Dian Ritter

rbara Croo a B t e ker e M

photo submitted by the author

For this Food-themed issue, we're pleased to share several poems by Barbara Crooker, poetry editor at Italian-Americana, and the author of nine full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series).

Barbara's first book, Radiance, won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her second book, Line Dance, won the 2009 Paterson Award for Excellence in Literature. In 2019, Poetry By The Sea named The Book of Kells by this author as the Best Poetry Book of that year.

The poet's work appears in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Moulin à Nef, Auvillar, France, and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland.

Garrison Keillor has recited her poems over sixty times on The Writer’s Almanac podcast, and she has read her poetry all over the country, including at The Festival of Faith and Writing, Poetry at Round Top, The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium, and at the Library of Congress.

She resides in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania. Find Barbara's poems in this issue on pages 16-17, 20-21, and 58-59, and visit her website at www.barbaracrooker.com.

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16

Painting, Fruit Trees in Blossom in the Wind, by Edvard Munch

U Pick

by Barbara Crooker

Hot July morning, sun a burner left on high. Raspberries, beveled treasures; sour pie cherries, ruby globes, filling the cardboard picking box. I’m by myself, listening to the chatter of my neighbors in adjoining rows. Some of us are up on ladders; some are down in the brambles and briars. We all think we’re 17 heaven, after the long winter, late cold spring. If this in high were a protest march, would a few be carrying opposite signs, shouting invectives? Maybe so, but we’re here in this small orchard, sharing recipes, tips on preserves, how to make a good pie. We cradle our baskets as if they contain unruly jewels.

And then we go our separate ways, licked by the thick tongue of the sun, to bring some sweetness to our families, blinking our blind eyes in the multilingual light.

Previously published in Poet Lore

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@artistdinaw

18 Breakfast Delight / Dina Walker

Dina Walker / La Poire 19

Credo

by Barbara Crooker

It’s early summer, everything running to green, and the sun has dipped its brush in gilt: coreopsis, black-eyed Susans, Stella d’Oro lilies. At night, the cool moon throws a silver net over the darkened yard. You can till the earth, hoe the rows, but each seed is an act of belief that somehow in the dark something is happening: seeds splitting their husks, softened by rain and spray from the hose, then sending up pale shoots, periscopes searching for light. Two leaves, four leaves, and suddenly: a vine. Which has a mind of its own, trellising up the tomatoes, smothering the beans. Remove the coils used for a foothold, place it in the space between rows, so it can grow longer, greener every day. Nobody ever sees this happen; we take it on faith. Next comes little lemon stars, then small green globes, which swell, fill, fueled by the sun. The calendar turns to August, days ripen, each one more golden than the next.

Nothing the gardener does can make this happen.

One morning, when the leaves are slick with dew, you go out to check and realize every rib is yellow, the netting is even, webbed with gold, and that which has held fast throughout this long season is ready to slip, fill your hands with its heft, fill your bowl with roundness, and soon, nestled in the boat of your spoon, the sun’s longing exploding on your tongue.

First published in The MacGuffin

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21

Photo: HQuality at Adobe Stock

22 A Healthy Diet of Clay #1 / Peter Ritter

Peter Ritter / A Healthy Diet of Clay #2 23

24 He's a Real Softee / Photo by Jeffrey Johannes

Peter Ritter / A Healthy Diet of Clay #3 25

Mama

Calzone

by Linda and Dan D’Amario

Pizza is king Upon the food throne But fold it in half And you have a calzone!

Mix flour and yeast Sugar, salt, H2O Let sit for some rest And you have pizza dough.

Now mix up the filling Anything will do All meat, all veggie Or a mix of the two.

Roll out the dough To form a nice pie One large or some small Whatever fits your eye.

Spread on the filling On just half – you’ll be do’in Then fold over the dough To make a half moo’n.

Pinch all the edges Make a slit for the steam And brush it with oil For a golden-brown sheen.

Heat to 475 Then pop in the oven Some tomato sauce for dippin’ Will top off the lovin’.

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Mama Calzone

by Linda and Dan D’Amario @jajik2004

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Photo by Jeffrey Johannes

Waiting for

Hansel & Gretel

by Janice O’Mahony

It is lonely all the time now.

Tension distorts the forest, my candy house not so sweet.

Age marks me, hooks my nose into chin, gives me dog teeth and snaky hair.

Trapped in this place of sugary solitude my anger grows.

I rage to consume, gnaw on beauty, swallow it down, plump up my withering blood.

Come, little children!

Tremble in my hands.

I will eat you as the world has me.

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@marybamborough

Mary Bamborough / Cobbled Together 29

The Joy of . . .

by Cynthia Trenshaw

To the far corner of the upper floor the first alluring scents arrive sizzled olive oil and garlic titillate my salivary glands pull me slowly down the hallway (enjoy - don’t hasten this) to trace the pulsing fragrance oniontomatogreenpepper sinuous, insistent spiraling in stairwell sliding past closed doors romanosausageparmesan impatient moan (slow down, don’t rush) reach the final doorway hung with spice smells (beaded curtain to seraglio) slip past strands of basilthymeoregano and into humid arms of steam from boiling pasta.

After all is consummated sated I retrace the steps through the ordered lingering scents remembering in reverse smiling languidly the whole way back to the far corner of the upper floor.

www.cynthiatrenshaw.com

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Mary Nelson / Sarah's Cake 31

The Wolf's Ode to Pigs

by Laura Garfinkel

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Illustration: Christos Georghiou at Adobe Stock

Pretty hooved prey of choice, I can’t help myself when I see you rut in the soil, such fat juicy ungulate. Musky oils wafting from your pores, smells like bacon sizzling over open flames. I stalk and skulk as you build houses of straw, sticks, and bricks. Soon I’m ravenous. All I can do is yell: LET ME IN. You grunt gibberish about your chinny chin chin.

Utter hogwash! I see red—start huffing and puffing and before I know it, I blow your houses in. I apologize, I’m carnivorous and you were delicious.

I wish we could’ve shared a meal, talked this out.

Such a misunderstanding. Revenge, you say?

Your brick house brother planning to boil and eat me when I come down the chimney?

Well, Bon appétit. Though I really wish you’d try to see things from my point of viewThis is who I am, what I was born to do.

And you, my pet? Domesticated.

Maybe if you’d offered scraps from your pail, this could have been a happier tale at The End.

Michael Hafner / Animal Food Facts 33

34 Bite Me! / Junior Barnes

It’s Post Time

by Robert Beveridge

The hot dog applies its own condiments, slaps itself on the bun.

After two and a half hours of fireworks, it’s about time someone did something for you.

Ten minutes until the next show, time enough to learn the newest dance craze, evade the police, discover a new barbecue sauce.

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@8trillian

36 Octo-Weiners / PM Fallon

Bake at 350

by Jim Landwehr

Village of Wales Poet Laureate (2018-19)

It is a culinary pile-up disaster a collision of food groups with casualties

Here in Wisconsin people call it casserole but I prefer to call it by its true name

HOTDISH!

It is without question my favorite food memory of growing up in Minnesota

Served somewhere between Monday’s pork chops and Thursday evening’s tacos

HOTDISH!

Mom made it with all the standard ingredients hamburger, macaroni, onion, peppers and tomato paste Baked at 350 until the top was lightly crusted it was the best part of an ordinary weeknight

HOTDISH! Snubbed as the food of the proletariat working class none of us kids cared what the rich folks thought The only upper crust we cared about was on the bread served with our…

HOTDISH!

www.jimlandwehr.com 37

Redolence

by Joan Wiese Johannes

When I smell ripe bananas, I remember the trip with my brother to his son’s wedding.

When old dance tunes on the radio play softly, our mother is dying again.

The trip with my brother to his son’s wedding.

Pungent gifts from a lavender farm.

Our mother is dying again.

Sage for smudging tightens our throats.

Pungent gifts from a lavender farm.

One hundred and two degrees!

Sage for smudging tightens our throats.

We can hardly breathe.

One hundred and two degrees!

When old dance tunes on the radio play softly, we can hardly breathe.

When I smell ripe bananas, I remember.

First published in Verse Wisconsin

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Bill Karberg / One of the Three Sisters 39

DINNER

by Dianne Lee Blomberg

Photo: pololia at Adobe Stock

Before

Sunday dinner started like all the others before it, except for one thing.

Serving bowls were passed around the Formica-topped kitchen table.

Mashed potatoes with butter melting across their fluffiness, rich brown gravy, sweet peas, Pillsbury crescent rolls, a jiggly Jell-O mold with shaved carrots and mandarin oranges mingling inside. And the heavy platter of roasted beef slices trimmed with a crackled salty-peppery crust of fat.

On my plate, I positioned my helping around its edge with peas glistening in the center. At age seven, I believed food should not touch. Everything was on my plate except the beef.

Not the beef.

Defeated, I hit my thigh with a fist, as my head dropped. How can they pretend it’s okay?

“You have to have a slice‘a meat, Dianne.” My dad was a protein pusher.

“I won’t eat it!” My voice firm. It was personal.

“You’ll have some and like it! You’ll sit there until it’s finished, too!” He won. He always did. Sort of.

I took a slice of meat. I did not eat any of it.

Alone at the table, all the plates cleared but mine, I swaddled the beef in a paper napkin and gently buried it at the bottom of the kitchen trash, below coffee grounds, potato peels, and slimes of uneaten Jell-O. Immediate guilt made me queasy. I should have found a nicer place for it.

“I’m finished!” I pushed my voice hard to sound angry as I yelled into the living room where everyone else watched Ed Sullivan. Alone in my dark room, I slumped across the bed and cried into my stuffed bear. The sort of cry that starts deep where memories dwell.

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One hour before dinner I changed out of church-clothes and hustled into the kitchen. All the kids had to get the Sunday meal on the table. I liked the Jell-O job because the orange powder clouded upward into a dust, and I licked its sweet tartness from my lips. Mama pulled the roast from the oven. When I saw it, a swift gasp for air came from my mouth and filled the room. Using two carving forks, she lifted and set it on a large platter to rest. A stabbing pain penetrated my gut. That familiar fragrance of roasted beef with a shimmering crisp top usually felt comforting to me. Today, in the kitchen filled with my family I felt alone and abandoned, and turned away with a lump in my throat.

Two hours before dinner I scooched my butt to the edge of the pew at St. Dominick’s Catholic Church in anticipation of Father Anthony’s words, “Respect all God’s creatures. Go in Peace.” My patent leather shoes click-clacked their way across the marble floor toward the exit.

I was the first of us five kids to reach the old Chevy in the parking lot.

Hunger pangs gnawed at me. Fasting before communion was a rule and I followed rules, at least those that might get me to heaven.

One day before dinner I bent low, lifting vines in search of the ripest tomatoes. Brushing past long trails of cucumbers in our yard, I snapped off the firmest one for our salad tomorrow. Its sunbaked smell filled my space and I felt summer slipping past. I looked up to see the barn stalls in the distance missing one cow, mine. I let tears drop to the dry earth at my feet, dotting it forever.

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Three weeks before dinner my dad returned from the feedlot down the road. Mama ordered him to, “Take off those muddy boots before you come in here.”

“We’ll have that beef in the freezer in about two and a half weeks,” he said.

“You tell Dianne, yet?” Mama.

“Yup. She’s out in the barn. Alone.”

In the barn, I lay on the hay where Pinky had been. His warmth, still tucked into the straw, embraced me. The ghost of his quiet “Moo” whispered to me, and I sobbed into my hands, my best friend gone.

Eight months before dinner I ran to the house, announcing Pinky had made great strides today in his training. “I rewarded him with an extra handful of food,” I stood straighter than usual and smiled.

Family members bored at another Pinky-announcement, ignored me. Mama said, “That’s nice, honey,” as she folded towels.

Ten months before dinner I told my grandma that Pinky and I went for a walk and he didn’t pull on the leash. She warned me that I’d best not expect too much of him. That seemed confusing since I hadn’t expected much of him so far. I chose Pinky from all the others. He was mine. We had an understanding. Friendships feel like that.

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Twelve months before dinner, I cozied up to Pinky on a fresh mound of hay. The formula in the baby bottle smelled like oats and vanilla. My dad made it with warm water to dissolve the powder.

“Make him drink the whole thing. He needs more than his mama’s milk to get fat.” Dad handed me the bottle.

I felt important like someone was depending on me. I shook it until my arm was worn.

Twelve months and twenty-one days before dinner, started like all the others before it except for the birth of three calves. One had pink eyes.

“Can I take care of this one?” I begged with delight.

“If you’ll promise to be responsible, you can,” Dad said.

“I promise! His name is Pinky. He’s mine and nobody else can feed him. I’m taking him to that corner of the barn where you put out the new hay. He’s my pet. OK? He’s my pet. That’ll be his bed and I’ll sit there with him ‘till he falls asleep, so he won’t feel scared of the dark.

So, nobody can bother him.” A smile stretched across my face as I guided my Pinky to his bed.

www.dianneblomberg.com

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44 Queen of Pomegranates / Arian Rana

@silverwheelsart

Banana fiber is soft, yet durable, and a renewable resource. This vegan yarn is made from decaying outer layers of the banana tree. Bark is harvested, then soaked in water to quicken the natural dissolving of the chlorophyll structures, leaving just the cellulose fibers. These are extruded into a pulp and spun into yarn.

Future Fiber (handwoven) by Lane Ellen 45

DIVINITY The Preferred Food of

ANGELS

by Linda Aschbrenner

This soft white fluffy confection looks like a dollop of snow or a frothy wave dancing atop the ocean.

Perhaps it’s called divinity because angels adore it.

It’s the most glorious candy you could ever make.

My only copy of this recipe is scrawled upon a yellowed and speckled card that is over 50 years old.

My family's made this heavenly treat for three generations.

I make it every December, but you can make it at any time. Even today.

First, cover two large cookie sheets with foil.

Second, pull out your mixer or electric hand beater and a large bowl. (Not a metal one.) Beat two egg whites with 1/8 teaspoon salt until the whites form peaks.

Now, in a large saucepan, stir 3 cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of corn syrup, and 2/3 cup water.

Boil until the mixture reaches the hard ball stage (250 degrees).

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Remove the saucepan from the heat, and give the egg whites a few more spins with the beaters, then slowly, carefully pour the hot syrup into the egg whites and beat at a high speed until the mixture passes the glossy stage.

Now, add 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Continue beating until the mixture forms a peak when the beaters are lifted. Then move to the spooning-out station.

Using two spoons, Quickly spoon out dollops onto the foil-covered cookie sheets.

You might want to recruit someone to help.

Ask, “Are you a spooner outer?”

When you are done, don’t forget to lick the beaters and scrape the bowl. Place these treats in a covered container or food storage bag.

Should an angel stop by, you're ready to serve a divine delicacy.

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Foodie

by Pat Snyder Hurley

www.pathurleypoet.com

Food is love, you said, ordered chocolate cake for me and for you to taste later with a kiss.

You blamed this passion on your mom — Jewish purveyor of bountiful buffets — even the salads stylish, wearing black olive accents to say nothing of that strawberry cake whipped cream mounds so high even your dad, faultless in his cutting, toppled it as in the end it may have toppled you, this foodie love of love — your only irrational bent but oh, the pleasure

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revisited graveside on anniversaries both birth and death with a lawn chair and mound of corned beef lean, cut thin on rye.

@bluesdrummer2405

Jon Bolton / Kryssies Feast 49

While You Were after Leonard Cohen's The Genius

by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal

I was a daddy’s little princess having lots of wants and wishes batting my eyelashes my candy-coated coaxing pursing my M &M sweetened lips daddy always caving in muttering something akin to “God help me” in Yiddish

a mommy’s girl mom not a Rosie the Riveter hard at work for Uncle Sam instead a real balabusta with me her little clone helping keep our kosher home ultra clean our brisket & matzo balls truly kvell-worthy

Photo: Joe Mabel, CC 3.0 Unported

a yeshiva boy wearing a satin kippah my waking hours and davening three times a day knowing little of life outside my own chowing down glatt pastrami on rye kosher pickles & rugelach Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic

a ghetto boy surviving your thunderous reign hiding my star and skull cap sneaking out after curfew foraging for anything to eat walking not too quickly heart racing focusing straight ahead sixth sense in high gear www.newyorkcitypoet.com 50

Background: Brockhaus & Efron Jewish Encyclopedia

Photo: Israel, Old Jerusalem, Jewish Quarter by Christopher Michel, CC 2.0 Generic

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Dinner at the

Shish Cafe

by Ronnie Hess

Previously published in Verse Wisconsin, Issue 113

My husband surprises me over dinner by asking Rabia, our Moroccan waitress, If she’s heard of Rabia from Basra, Rabi’a Al-’Adawiyya, The eighth century Iraqi poet, the holy woman born into poverty, The visionary who when freed from slavery chose a lifetime of prayer.

My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude And my Beloved is with me always.

Muslim mothers give daughters her name. Of course, Rabia knows.

She takes our order—Syrian salad with artichokes and feta cheese, Pea soup with potatoes, lamb and string beans stewed in tomato sauce.

She sits with us while she writes the dishes down on her pad.

She speaks English, French and Arabic. She is studying to be an architect.

She holds our wine glasses at the stem, not the lip.

The lamb comes with rice mixed with pine nuts and pomegranate seeds.

She kisses me goodnight on both cheeks.

My husband says listening to poetry is hard work. Poems are dense.

Sometimes, I let him read mine. He sits quietly. He studies them.

He edits in blue ink in the margins. He writes words like Good, nice image, not quite right, and meaning unclear.

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www.ronniehess.com

Junior Barnes / Nsenene Shows Off Her New Dress 53

Everybody Likes Free Food

by Julia C. Spring

Photo: Gilles San Martin, CC 2.0 Generic

During my two years in Kampala, Uganda–1968 through 1970–I lived in a housing estate for government employees. One night my downstairs neighbor and friend Pauline, a policewoman, called through the open stairwell that the grasshoppers, nsenene, were swarming and we had to go catch some. Kids and adults were all over the parking lots and yards of Bukoto Estate, yelling in excitement. The nsenene were drawn to the overhead fluorescent lights, and people were literally scooping them out of the air with their hands. Pauline and her cousin grabbed theirs and put them into a jar but I was squeamish at first.

There were so many grasshoppers that they were bouncing off my head.

I decided that if I could stand nsenene touching my hair, I could touch them with my hands. I began to grab the fluttering creatures and put them in the jar, opening it and closing it as fast as I could. It was exciting out there in my dress and sneakers, live creatures struggling spikily in my fists, surrounded by dozens of people doing the same thing. The nsenene began to move on, so we took the sixty or so in our jar back to Pauline’s flat. Still laughing about the raid, we heated up a pan and fried them in their own fat and a bit of salt. They smelled vaguely nutty and crackled as the heat killed them. They were crunchy and salty—the perfect snack—and we ate them fast.

A month or two later, a staff member at Butabika Psychiatric Hospital, where I volunteered as a social worker, found me and told me to come watch grounds workers destroy an ekiswa. You could see these termite hills everywhere in Uganda. They were made of bright red dirt that had been transformed by the termites’ excretions into hard rust-colored pottery. They

grew taller and bulkier than a person, with cactus-like protrusions for ventilation. I had gotten used to insects everywhere around the hospital, like the red ants that marched in columns across the walkways or even up telephone cords, so you had to brush them off as you spoke on the phone. I couldn’t imagine that termites would be very interesting, but why not take a look with the other staff and a few patients who had gathered?

This eight-foot tall ekiswa on the Butabika grounds had been ignored for many years—we all passed by it regularly. But now it was impinging on one of the water mains, so it had to be destroyed. The goal was to get to the queen, who was said to be huge, and kill her, dispersing the termites. The means was smashing the ekiswa from the top down with big sticks and slashing at it with pangas, machete-like knives. The men broke through a series of irregularly-shaped internal clay compartments. Finally they reached one a little smaller than an American football, right in the center of the ekiswa’s base.

When they smashed it open, the queen occupied almost the whole chamber. Tiny worker termites squeezed in and out to clean and feed her and carry her larvae off to the nursery. Her two front sections totaled about an inch in length. Behind them was the abdomen, seven or so inches long, tapering toward the ends, and maybe seven inches in circumference. It looked like fat: pale yellow, glistening, pulsating.

It made me think of margarine in plastic wrap, moving.

I had never imagined the queen could be that large and object-like, immobilized by her ovary-filled abdomen, producing 30,000 eggs a day over a fifteen-year life span. I was repelled and fascinated. The worker termites also seemed repelled by the smashing of the chamber, skittering away from the one who had been the center of their universe only a moment before.

The men who had razed the ekiswa chopped off the queen’s two front sections and carefully picked up the abdomen. They would take it home, wrap it in plantain leaves, cook it slowly in ash, then enjoy the delicacy. I wished they would ask me to join them, but I wasn’t sure I could put anything so grotesque in my mouth, even cooked.

I told myself that the men’s families needed the protein-rich termite eggs more than I did, so if I’d gotten an invitation to the feast I’d have had to decline. But still, I was sorry I had not had the chance to say that self-sacrificing no.

This essay was first printed in The Corn Belt Almanac (2015, p.44) by The Head & The Hand Press Available at www.theheadandthehand.com/store/the-corn-belt-almanac

Parsley

by Katrin Talbot

Admired for your exquisite verdant articulation, your long-drink-of-water stems, A stunning number in emerald on the cutting board runway

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Image: Goumbik at Pixabay

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What Ogden Nash Said

About Kale

by Carrie Sherrill

Power food, so claims the kale fit for the frail and those that ail.

To make us young, and fit, and trim just swallow fast and drink it in.

Those leaves will pass across your palate down the hatch, into your gullet.

Your muskles rival Popeye’s biceps you’ll have the strength to do those high steps!

It certainly will make you leaner and for the mind, you’ll be much keener.

But if it’s flavor that you savor perhaps with kale, should take a waiver.

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After Oral Surgery

by Barbara Crooker

I start to forget how much I like to eat: baguettes shattering into splinters; salted popcorn, its kernels lethal now; oatmeal cookies, crumbs that infiltrate the gaping crater.

Now I’m in the land of bland, living on creamed soups, mashed potatoes, coddled eggs. . . . Anything with cayenne, tabasco, jalapeños would electrify these throbbing open sockets. . . .

Even though I’m almost a vegetarian, I start to dream about steak, charbroiled, sputtering and hissing, blood pooling on the plate. I might as well imagine eating my pillow. Night seems endless, stomach mumbling, talking out loud.

I envy those models in commercials whose encounters with food border on the pornographic.

They never chew or swallow, but oh, what ecstasies of foreplay.

Meanwhile, my poor gums thrum with pain. What I wouldn’t give for one brief tryst with a hot slice of buttered toast. . . .

First published in The Healing Muse

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Operative surgery illustrated (1852) by Richard Upton Piper

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National Archives at College Park, 1939

Sonnenschein

by Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2017-18)

Photo: Jana Ohajdova at Pexels

Eddie used to say that a day without sauerkraut was like a day without sunshine. I wonder what he’s thinking now that scientists have discovered that chickens, suffering from bird flu, were miraculously cured when fed ground kraut.

Eddie served kraut with brats and Reubens and fat country style ribs.

He even put it into a cake, a batter so rich and fudgy the tart strings melted. So now I imagine legions of chickens mill about, wearing tiny lederhosen waiting to get their daily dose.

I imagine Eddie, too, his big head, bald as trimmed cabbage, his briny smile, his meaty hand shading the sun from his sweet-sour eyes.

Previously published in Verse-Virtual, June 2015

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by P hyllis

Wax

She hovers in the space just above our heads and each dish we order has her finger in it: the salad we’ll share as they would have, the crab cakes he would not otherwise choose since she’s allergic.

His small talk is encrypted, a simulation of normality. I mention her name. She is the recurring seasoning in my conversation. I want her to be the main dish for this meal. I want it clear she is the reason I am here.

I listen carefully, but cannot unscramble his playful words, cannot break the code.

Suddenly he’s serious, intense. He loves her, he says, as he chews the ache of her betrayal. He clenches his fists.

It’s hard to swallow fists.

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Photo: Cottonbro at Pexels

e y d a r t Be

Kim Duddridge / Stuffed Peaches

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I'll Never Be Your Darling

by Gabby Gilliam

Photo: Hooters, Chattanooga, TN, by Jason Trew, CC 3.0 Unported

They call me pumpkin and pudding when they’ve fallen deep into their cups sprinkle me with sugar and dumpling as if their endearment’s enough to fill my pockets or bank account.

They plant dirty coins on the table while calling me honey and peach and I navigate best as I’m able while skirting the edge of their reach.

Feigning patience becomes paramount.

I stretch my smile until my clenched jaw hurts. secretly hope that they choke on their words.

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gabbygilliam.squarespace.com

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Image: Wes Fallon/Ascender Graphics & Studio @ascender_g_studio

The Palouse is a region covering parts of northern Idaho and eastern Washington. It is characterized by steep loess hills that grow wheat and other crops without irrigation. The large size and hilliness of the croplands require aircraft for the application of fertilizers and pesticides. In addition, very unique machinery has been developed to allow contour farming of such steep hills.

The view across this agricultural landscape yields striking patterns that are mesmerizing. But down at the base of the hills, there is a calming sense of complete envelopment in luxuriant crops soon to become the bread of life.

Mark Hardy - Crop Dusting Plane and Wheat Field, Palouse Region, ID (infrared image)

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The deserts of the western United States have indeed been made to bloom by extraordinary engineering of the watersheds. Many miles of canals have been constructed to distribute a baptism of life-giving water across the dry landscape.

The result has been rich agricultural lands that grow exceptional crops of many types. But people also follow water, and the croplands are growing houses now.

Mark Hardy - Sun Reflection in Canal near Eagle, ID (infrared image)

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Close to Jesus Photo: Tikovka1355 at Pixabay

Previously published in Bramble Literary Magazine

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by Jeffrey Johannes

Grandma always picked red-striped over pale yellow ripe, thin-sliced for pie, and froze some of her apples for winter when produce was as rare as a Catholic eating meatloaf on Friday.

She pulled straws from her broom to test the doneness of cake and sang hymns to time what she was baking.

Once she sang herself so close to Jesus that every cloud had a silver lining and her ginger snaps got extra crispy.

Grandma had more recipe cards than liver pills, and I have them now.

They’re tough to follow because of her hen scratch cursive and my lack of knowledge of smidgins and a pinch, but I still like my cookies brittle and slightly burnt so they hold up when I dip them in a glass of milk.

Courting Disaster

of Biblical Proportion

by Joan Wiese Johannes

My calico cat is stretched on the center rack of the oven, which I left open after the cheesecake squeezed through the spring-form pan and burned itself up.

Purring and warm, perfumed in vanilla and blackened butter, like Shadrack, Meshak, and Abednego she is sure that she can walk into fire without being burned, certain that her God lives to serve.

Photo: Cong H at Pexels

Previously published in Free Verse and at yourdailypoem.com

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Summer Days at the

FIVE & DIME

by Annette Langlois Grunseth

It’s where you rode your blue bike with a quarter in your pocket dreaming of how to spend it.

What to buy – pondering Lik-m-Aid and Pixy Stix, Jawbreakers, Bazooka Bubble Gum, or Red Hots.

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Photo: PenelopeIsMe, CC 3.0 Unported

At the end of Kent Street on the other side of busy Grand Avenue the Ben Franklin Five and Dime beckoned.

You splurged on red wax lips and a black wax moustache, ten cents each.

With the leftover nickel you bought a miniature six-pack of wax bottles filled with nectar bit off the tiny wax caps, sucked out sweet juice and chewed the wax bottles into a squishy ball.

Biting down on the soft blob you carefully peeled the wax from your mouth examining your tooth prints.

Happiness was the Five and Dime, a quarter in your pocket

Image credit: Kafziel, CC 3.0 Unported

leaving in the morning on your own until the rule of street lights blinking on called you home at dusk.

www.annettegrunseth.com 71

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Photo: David Kristofer at Unsplash

Photo: Elizabeth and Grand by John Twiggs

Six Women at the Corner

by Susan Twiggs

We sit and pause used up from buying live fish and dried mushrooms, black radish and bok choy.

We take time to visit to savor our worries to be listened to.

We have husbands.

They stay at home reading newspapers in Chinese and relishing the silence.

Poem and photo were exhibited in the 2015 Artists' Muse exhibition in Woodruff, WI

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Blueberry Picking

by Katherine Edgren

Perfect sport for the obsessive compulsive.

Seeker, finder, harvester, collector, lover of sun on back and arms, hat shading face. Fruitful dancer who reaches high, bends low, plucks here, strips there.

Divider of branches to get to the centers of thickets.

Handfuls of blue gems clunk in my hot pink bucket. I watch them climb the edge. Enough for one tart-sweet pie, then two, with more to squeeze in the freezer.

Weighed down, bucket-heavy, I’m forced to leave. Hard to walk away from so much hanging fruit. kkedgren.wordpress.com 74

Photo: Nikhita Singhal at Unsplash

All the dusty jewels are purpling.

Trading pale green for dusky pink, then indigo. Each one flaring into a little crown, they dangle in my face saying pick me, pick me.

Redolent of August with crisp sweet corn, rolling with cantaloupes, ripe peaches, and green tomatoes reddening.

O, My Tomato!

by CJ Muchhala

Shall I compare you to the squash of summer?

You are rounder, more colorful, and tasty.

Slugs leave shiny threads of slime—a bummer— On pale misshapen impotent squash while pasty Blossoms shrivel on their tips in midday sun, And stick disgustingly to yellowing flesh.

Their unkempt vines creep nightly through the lawn And over the deck, creating a tangled mess.

But your red beauty only serves to heighten My lust, Tomato, temptress of my tongue.

Since summer squash grows pallid as you brighten, It’s to your luscious bod’ my song is sung.

Store-bought tomatoes, reddened off the vine, Can never match sun-ripened globes like thine.

Photo: DS30 at Pixabay

Previously published in Your Daily Poem

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Jeannine’s Kitchen

by Diana Raab

Bring me to Jeannine’s kitchen where the pride of cooking sweeps across her face, and aromas pull you into their goodness.

The heart of our family resides in this kitchen where meals are prepared smells linger and concerns voiced.

Jeannine’s kitchen features a steaming pot of soup— fish or farmer’s, simmering on a six-burner stove in a kitchen where colors combine like the splatters on her artist canvas.

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Photo: WerbeHoch at Pixabay

Food carries memories for this family of many yesterdays— European immigrants arriving on boats, warming baby bottles to popping open bubbles of champagne, while pabulum drips from baby lips as artichokes cook, steaks sizzle potatoes fry, asparagus boil as chestnuts roast in her oven, fresh strawberries, and a glass of red wine to ease the food down gently and peacefully.

Jeannine glows while strutting through her kitchen amidst lingering aromas and apple pie spilling over in a hot oven which she tells children not to touch, but just to eat the pie because this is what warms her heart. dianaraab.com

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The Cheesemaker

by Katrina Serwe

Years ago, when I was a younger woman, a silver haired man with a beautiful smile asked me, Is your father a cheesemaker?

No. Is your brother a cheesemaker?

No. Is your husband a cheesemaker?

No. That is so sad! Who makes you cheese?

To stay healthy, you should eat cheese for breakfast every day.

I remember the retired cheesemaker as I savor a slice of Colby admire its orange yellow solidness, feel mellow creaminess wash over my tongue, enjoy the subtle sweet tang taste and wonder what Wisconsin cheesemaker made this for me with love?

What is the portrait of a cheesemaker now?

How many of them are women?

Do they still bring cheese home for their family?

Do they eat it for breakfast?

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Photo: Polina Tankilevitch at Pexels

Cheesemaker from Vernon County, Wisconsin

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Gumbo Dreams

for Fred Levenhagen & his gumbo

by Peter Sherrill

It takes you to your mother’s side that summer just before the dusk When bare feet waded furrowed earth and bayou-water thick as cream.

The sun-breath hot upon your neck, her warm hands filled with onion-musk – You’ll find that evening once again in gumbo dreams.

The sky slid yellow, orange, pink; the shadows ambled up the wall.

She hummed Amazing Grace the way she always did. It seems As clear now as the night she said, go give the supper call – You’ll stand beside her once again in gumbo dreams.

Before the men came in she winked, let’s make sure that it’s fit to eat – Blew the spoon and held it for you. Filè, parsley, garlic, steam; A sauce as thick as mother’s love, ginger-brown and pepper-sweet: You’ll taste that evening once again in gumbo dreams.

Photo: jhgordon4 at Adobe Stock

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Art by Brigitte Werner at Pixabay

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Photo: Roger Gustavsson at Pixabay

The Things We Eat for Love

by Judith Shapiro

My life can be charted in loved ones and food. When I was six weeks old, my parents hired a Swedish woman to take care of me. Ruth showed me two things (three if you count The Lawrence Welk Show, watched curled up next to her in a stuffed chair on Sunday nights) – unconditional love and Swedish food.

Ruth fed me pickled herring, gravlax, and knäckebröd, a remarkably dry crispbread. She taught me to make Swedish meatballs when I was barely tall enough to reach the top of the stove. We made wreathshaped cookies at Christmastime with almonds ground by hand in the heavy metal food mill she attached to the counter. Best of all, she stirred my ice cream until it reached a perfect softened consistency. I ate pickled herring straight out of the jar for years as if it was normal.

Apparently it wasn’t.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be just like my dad, so I ate what he ate. Kosher hotdogs piled high with sauerkraut, mustard and hot peppers. Broiled kippers for breakfast. The raunchy fish smell fouled the entire kitchen. No one ever joined us.

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My mother’s specialty was homemade fudge at midnight. We’d eat it warm, straight out of the pot, too inpatient to wait for it to harden.

When I was older, at midnight in a hotel in New York, she called room service for two glasses of milk and two shots of scotch. So much for fudge.

In my twenties, my sisters and I would stay up talking, drinking cokes in thick glass bottles, eating potato sticks out of the can. Eventually we’d realize it was late, and agree to go to bed as soon as we finished our cokes, after which we’d talk for another twenty minutes. Inevitably one of us would pop open another can of potato sticks which we’d then have to finish. This would play out several times before we finally went to bed. We never learned.

Then I met Barry. The first time I slept at his house, in the morning he made pancakes from scratch, with warmed, amber Vermont maple syrup. Needless to say, I fell in love.

Years later I met Avery. By then I was vegan. Avery introduced this New Yorker to all things North Carolinian. She took me on a road trip, a quest for the perfect buttermilk biscuit. She got boiled peanuts from gas station convenience stores. They made my fingers puffy, lips swollen from salt, but damn, they were good. She fed me pork rinds and what she called North Carolina barbecue. She made me her famous pimento cheese ball, grits with salt and pepper, and sausage with milk gravy. I tried it all, before settling back into my vegan ways. It turns out unconditional love isn’t just for babies. peaceineveryleaf.com

JoAnn Castle, Lawrence Welk, Cissy King (1969)

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Hold the Gravy

by Kelly Sargent

you say to the buxom, auburn-haired waitress wearing pink frosted lipstick when you order the turkey special with mashed potatoes from the menu in Parkway Diner on Sunset Bay Road.

We seek wounding in the places we most need to heal, you tell me as though you are my therapist, and check the reflection of your piercing green eyes and chiseled jaw in the window beside you.

Order anything you want, hot stuff, you say as you drum your manicured fingers in tune to Survivor’s “Is This Love” playing in the background: I've tread those mean streets Blind alleys where the currency of love changes hands.

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After you drop your clean fork for the waitress to pick up in front of you, you brush its back gently against your white starched sleeve and promptly stab your slab of cold turkey that doesn’t need it because it is paper thin and dry.

This meat is overdone, you say with your mouth full and cranberry sauce tucked in the corner of your lip.

It’s definitely not worth the price, you grumble wiping your lop-sided frown with your handkerchief and eyeing the fit blond with the bob cut over my shoulder.

You missed a spot, I say, tossing you my used napkin.

Next time, pay for the gravy, I tell you.

Photo: Larry Myhre, CC 2.0 Generic

I wave to Frosted Lips.

Separate checks, I say over the drummer’s solo. kellysargent.com

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Toodles, Noodles

by Maryann Hurtt

a poet-cook's dilemma

my muse called late today no use ignoring Kate when she gets it in her head to get in my head so there I was making stew feeling quite proud of my cooking prowess when she rang of course I had to heed words tumble weeding out of bookshelves the backyard fox hole even the bedpan I emptied early this morning you would think Kate was giving me my own personalized dictionary when I smelled something noxious stew meat stuck on cast iron smoking the house fumes Kate liked dancing in as she waved goodbye toodles, noodles! thinking she would have the last word

Image: GeraKTV at Adobe Stock

maryannhurtt.com

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Leftover

Image: Anshu A at Unsplash

by Ed Werstein

This is just to say I have eaten the pizza that was in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast forgive me it was delicious so greasy and oh so cold.

edwerstein.com

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88 Strawberries / Connie Henke

conniehenkefineart.com