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The Kitchen Test

 

I. Reduction

Christmas tree sap—pungent and thick with direction.

Fried plantains soak in the scent of swollen red kidney beans.

Yams candy in the oven; not my mother’s recipe.

 

My mother’s bridal cookbook awed me.

Handwritten recipes steeped in French: bouillabaisse, sauté, confiture de fraise

the sweet and heavy whip of translations of what sustains her:

food, husband, children, and work.

 

My mother’s cookbook conjuring academe French I did not know then

anchored by black & white wedding photos; her eyes both seeking

the holy promise of water—a blessing

Her eyes paused on a picture or ingredient 

Breath evened by a table lined; the order of oven to table

 

II. Peeling

My instinct was to go off the page; a deviation 

From process—even in my mundane layers of carrots

washed free of debris; only half-soaked ad cut down to size for sugarcoating

The black pepper last in line to temper the sugar with intention  

of caramelized messages sweetly breaking over taste buds

stubborn sweet then tickled pepper breaking open

 

III. Folding

What if I could code myself in this language?

What I could learn to speak in measurements; announce order?

What if matching tablecloths and sorted spoons

Shed fears of plates stumbling from my hands? 

Popping my knuckles I listened again to her whisking —premature she said

Then more insistent: three months; you’re a fighter and so on

We fought.

My birth forced to myth and I a mystery to her. I was 

bewildered each time she claimed me a marvel proof that God is good.

Other days: You must have crawled out from under a rock became my place.

A slippery origin

rather than the blessed infant walkabout; hands camped quietly 

the my gauze of my three month old skin that ached

to split open. Cutdowns by medication burned and thickened

my arms into carnivale stares and searching eyes wondering what tattoos meant

if these we only mine. No ink or needles. Sharpened my wish to know

yellow or rubber from that time in a box that breathed just for me

while my gloved mother basted my skin with warmth and to the good sign

of my solid feet 

I am eager to say yes and join

the world still fresh and stirring for me to just break open and live.

I stir.

 

IV. Paring

Back to the turning over of vegetables…unsure 

The slipping of stable iron from my hands—always fretful

Of the first bites of guests pecking 

The order of obligatory kisses to strangers while I had learned otherwise

 

The silent threat of strangers starred in my America. 

Turn away, lock doors, never let sweets slip through.

Imperfectly glazed—the carrots flimsy and breaking, my eyes iron cast downward;

My mouth bare and unsuitable for Holiday Company 

A clumsy anthill, a cog of black simmering

(The pepper insisted on being noticed.)

 

V. Soup Bones

My father briefly mulls over these pages 

Until the image of my mother—a close up of her in white

Moves him to stillness; a healing

Wearing fresh surgical gloves, snug and sturdy

Against his drumming fingers 

He is awaiting the time when he’ll carve

the meats quickly; correctly with the satisfying break

of bone, slicing of meat, the sharing of plates sturdy

with island food: griot pork can tell your past; black rice dyed

with mushrooms spin a memory on your tongue

still tasting languages…the click of joints announced

meat and marrow; my father’s work was preparation.

There is precision in cutting; a dance of blade to skin.

Thickened knuckles tight in the grip of clean lines.