Food is love.

TWO COOKS

Until Dex she’d thrived on conflict,
intrepid illusions and huge whacks.
After the previous Pan Man left
and took all the best knives

she’d cut off her hair,
roamed the earth,
concealed behind a balaclava;
fly fishing in Yosemite,

paddling beneath the borealis,
climbing Transylvanian Alps
and the stairs of Dracula’s castle,
nipperkin at the ready.

Long mane slowly returned,
warming her viper heart in the process.
Finally, reclaiming relevance
and the ability to deliver hearty meals,

the rest of her returned home as well,
where she bumped into Dex
tossing a hot salad.
Beyond-measuring-Dex

pitted her olives
and scratched her back
according to their pact.
Two cooks can herd one another.

Neither can call it quits
or die in the weeds
no matter how heated
the moments or kitchens become.

With a shared fondness
for curry they taper toward
the holidays and their first Christmas,
a coastal Christmas.

Ah, the Internet, where anyone can express an opinion however vociferously. It makes one long for the days before virtuality. Trolls. And print. I still enjoy reading books and magazines and recently learned of Renaissance poet Laura Battiferri in an excellent article by art critic Peter Schjeldahl, whom I admire greatly.

PETER IS A POET

“Art has many mansions,”
according to Peter Schjeldahl.
“Today the most compelling
tend to the tumbledown.”
I ponder “tumbledown”
and how it applies.
Are we to the point
where we ache for the past so badly,
we plaster on anything
vintage or gaudy?

Interrupted by a ding-
I forgot to turn off Notifications-
a comment from a supposed friend
taking umbrage with a quote I’d posted.
“In a sense we haven’t got an identity
until somebody tells our story.
The fiction makes us real.”-Robert Kroetsch.
DF: So Harry Potter is real? Lots of books
about him. How about Spiderman?
Ask a 10-year-old. Both are pretty fucking
real to that crowd.

DF: Huh?
No doubt Kroetch meant “real” figuratively.
DF employs the word, “bullshit.”
It’s vital to explain my folly, prove his point.
Troll. I don’t type “troll.”
I may curse like a laid-off oil rig worker
but refrain from further verbal engagement,
employ the Block option.
I can live without winning,
will take my triumphs elsewhere,
return to the New Yorker
and Schjeldahl’s The Medici at the Met
to marvel.

Oh, he’s a poet as well as a critic,
according to Wikipedia.
The highest form of literature.
Explains his facility with language.
I highlight resonant phrases in yellow:
“…virtuosic artifice.”
Yes, feigning demands feigning well,
going for the gusto.
“…ornamenting a milieu of preening style
and often freewheeling Eros,”
a reference to the Medici state.

Helldogs. Vulgate.
I must use those!
“…accidently burlesque ways.”
I wish to employ “burlesque” thusly
but these days most people
associate the term with strippers
instead of its true meaning, “parody.”

Misogyny.
I suspect that’s DF’s problem.
I dared to eschew
“…the golden circle of his regard.”

Dammit. Writing about my mother again. That’s her-Corona- in the middle. I’ve always thought we looked entirely unalike but can see a resemblance in this photo taken back in the days of ashtrays and doilies. Our memory plays tricks but there are clues. The place is Winnipeg on the occasion of my sister Donna’s baptism. I remember these lovely Anishinabe women, wish I could recall their names. As the poem states, my gregarious mother had few friends as we never stayed in one place for more than a few years. We appear well-cared for. She loved to do our hair and dress us up. This was early in her marriage. My mother could be tender, but mostly, tough. She had to be.

THE FIRST TIME MY MOTHER CRIED

In front of me. That I recall. She cried
for her best hen-party gal pal Sharon.
The pair often cackled together.
Mom had few friends, we moved so often

and Sharon was instantly a sister sort.
My sweet, six year old bum
was on the middle swing
when Mom emerged from the house,

apron clad, perpetual tea towel
resting on her shoulder,
which came in handy as you will see.
Sadness brought out the nurse in her,

sadness aroused tenderness.
Memory evaluations can be dodgy,
so many lost but his one remains.
Weeping, she handed over half an apple.

I looked down.
A tear plashed onto the snowy flesh.
Mine. Mom, why are you crying?
At last, she told me.

Sharon died in a car crash.
Is there a more banal fate
than dying in a car crash?
I’ve nearly died in a car crash

on three occasions.
What kind of fool am I?
A practically-raised-in-a-car fool.
Car rides equalled happiness;

new shoes or a hike in the woods,
laughing all the way.
She dried my cheeks
with the perpetual tea towel.

Toward the end my mother cried
more than cackled
and there was never a tea towel handy.
Not so perpetual after all.