Another perfect image courtesy of the Old Design Shop.
“A quiet night preludes the festivities” nods to the classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
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Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books:
In the Ocean: a year of poetry
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012
This illustration gem appears courtesy of the Old Design Shop, a wonderful resource for vintage images.
You cooking me
Two burnished hazelnuts
singe flax.
Golden Savoiardi shake
loose vanilla pods.
An oiled aubergine
turns roasted cumin seeds.
The sorrel and bay sauté
with wild mushrooms,
freshly picked.
A wholesome slice seals
the Dijon.
—
I have written a number of poems that draw on the influences of cooking and kitchen. Today’s offering started as a meditation on the colour mustard, the most unglamorous (even unsexy) of colours. The meditation shifted along the colour spectrum towards synonyms of yellow, golden-yellow and brown. (A Poem A Day October was once again the prompt source.)
“Mustard and brown” vied as an alternative title for the poem. In this version, the end lines would also have been different:
A wholesome slice seals
you cooking me.
Here is the alternative version in its entirety.
Mustard and brown
Two burnished hazelnuts
singe flax.
Golden Savoiardi shake
loose vanilla pods.
An oiled aubergine
turns roasted cumin seeds.
The sorrel and bay sauté
with wild mushrooms,
freshly picked.
A wholesome slice seals
you cooking me.
I’m still undecided as to which combination works better poetically. I prefer the opening version for it’s punch and mustard. What’s your take?
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books:
In the Ocean: a year of poetry
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012
By Leon Brooks [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
the fat floated to the top
I scraped it off
on setting
I melted a combination
dark chocolate and caramel bars.
Dark chocolate I love.
At work they
prefer caramel bars.
On setting to the top
a combination
dark chocolate and caramel bars
separated as fat
on the top.
On setting I tried to disguise the mess with icing sugar.
The powder disguise melted
into the combination
dark chocolate and caramel bars
still warm.
I ruined an attempt of
dark chocolate and caramel bars.
I ruined rocky road.
—
At a friend’s flat-warming on Saturday one of the guests recounted the sad tale that inspired this poem. I did warn the narrator that the line “I ruined rocky road” would find its way into my poem on the theme of ‘failure‘, yet another prompt from A Poem A Day October.
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books
Image courtesy of the Old Design Shop.
The dark encroaches earlier and the temperatures drop. September heralds autumnal change. This time last year I was already battening down by spending more evenings in with the creaking heating, baking and feeling the quiet life.
Image attribution: Sue Clark (Flickr: Jack and Jill) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This time last year I revisited a poem based on the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme. This version was a shortened version of the ‘Tumbling After‘ I had written the previous December.
Both versions veer towards the same scene: Jill watching Jack from afar and awaiting his delivery. Although not true to the nursery rhyme’s narrative, I fabricated my own thematic direction. I wanted to evoke a pastoral world in which young people worked in particular gendered realms and were awakening to an adolescent sexuality. So I placed Jill in the kitchen baking bread and Jack outside in the field hoeing and on the hill collecting water.
If you’re curious about the original nursery rhyme you might find the Wikipedia write up interesting. I stumbled across it while preparing this post. A further link was this handy visualization of the rhyme. Perhaps you’ll have as much fun as I did playing with the graphic display options.
Both versions of ‘Tumbling After’ are included in my book, Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys.
