Toss Well to Coat Evenly by Tori Grant Welhouse (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Toss Well to Coat Evenly
by Tori Grant Welhouse

            That summer a buttery light got into everything.
I was in between jobs.
We bought a new gas grill.
                        I placed chicken pieces in a large bowl,

            plumped up and pale as coddled cream.
The baby played on a rug in the great room,
reading a story to herself while nudging
                        wood blocks with her peachy feet.

            Her father mowed our green sweep of lawn.
The smell of cut grass lifted on a breeze
through the kitchen window. I snapped
                        cobs of corn in thirds. The boys slept

            until noon. They moved around me in the
kitchen smelling like campfire. They overfilled
bowls with Kix®, which rumbled in a raft
                        of golden milk. They talked in a code

            of friends and girls and sports and elbow
jabs. They watched me melt butter.
They promised to be home by dinner.
                        I bought a new cookbook.

            The word blackening caught my attention.
I slashed the fleshiest parts
of chicken, streamed butter.
                        Raising children was a haphazard business.

            Where was the bonfire? I sprinkled spices—
cumin, paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper.
That summer the corn tasseled.
                        Children slept dreamless.

            Tossing well to coat evenly,
we laughed around the table.
We fanned our lips, our tongues
                        on fire. The boys gave the recipe five stars.

PAINTING: Tablecloth by Maria Primachenko (1976).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I am fascinated by food and recipes. Food is identity. Food is home. Food is adventure. When my sister died, I reread the cookbooks she gave me. When my mother died, I inherited her recipe box.  I’ve been working on poems paired with recipes. This poem was inspired by a recipe for blackened chicken and corn that highlighted a summer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tori Grant Welhouse’s poems have appeared most recently in Bone Bouquet, Half Mystic, and The Woolf. She earned an honorable mention in the 2021 Hal Prize and was a runner-up in the 2020 Princemere Prize. She won Etching Press’s 2020 poetry chapbook competition for Vaginas Need Air and Skyrocket Press’s inaugural novel-writing contest with her YA fantasy The Fergus. Learn more torigrantwelhouse.com.