Garam Masala, 1972 by Tere Sievers (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Garam Masala, 1972
by Tere Sievers
               For Brooke

We stand on their front porch,
invited to dinner by our friends,
smell the bright aromatics of
crushed spices from the kitchen,
cinnamon, cardamom, cloves,
the perfume of garam masala.

                    II
I pull out Brooke’s 1972 recipe book,
food splotched and yellow-paged.
On the inside cover is a hand-
written menu: chicken curry,
samosas, naan, chutney,
hot, spicy food, a match for
the heat she was seeking.

                    III
The 70s warmed up her life.
She welcomed fiery kisses,
worshiped sun in a macramé  bikini,
tried thrills on all the hot rides.
The years burned by, took their toll.
She was alive, and then she wasn’t.

                    IV
In my kitchen cupboard, 48 jars
of spices, caps tight, wait for an
invitation from a recipe to open up.
The garam masala jar is empty
but I can still smell her spice.

PHOTO: Organic Zing Garam Masala, available at Amazon. Ingredients include coriander, cumin, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and black pepper.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: In the mid-1970s, I attended the weekly Beyond Baroque Poetry Workshop and benefited from the supportive environment. Now, my weekly Poetry fix comes in Donna Hilbert’s poetry workshop. There, surrounded by talented writers, now good friends, I continue the effort. As I age, writing poetry helps me see clearly the joys of a long life and teaches me how to survive its losses.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tere Sievers lives and teaches in Long Beach California. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, Pearl Magazine, as well as Arroyo Seco Press and Silver Birch Press Anthologies.

Hope’s Kitchen by Sheila Sondik (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Hope’s Kitchen
by Sheila Sondik

The poet titled her book
Winter Recipes from the Collective.
Was she slyly pledging allegiance
to our well-thumbed and bespattered
bibles of vegetarian cookery?

A college friend tells me
she stayed with us for a week
50-odd years ago and remembers
our making delicious veggie meals:
Spinach Rice Pot, Garbanzo Bake
and others we’ve all forgotten.

Now, in our seventies, we’ve
resurrected some of these recipes.
They’re still “surprisingly good,”
which was our jokey comment upon
tasting Noodle Surprise for the first time.

We still joke a lot. But who now
shares the optimism of our youth?
Still, we silently, surreptitiously hope
for something just a bit more surprising
than sunflower seeds in a casserole.

Please join us tonight for dinner.
We’re cooking Lentils, Monastery Style.

PHOTO: Diet for a Small Planet by by Frances Moore Lappé (50th Anniversary Edition, 2021).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The title of Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück inspired my reflections about the impact books like Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé had on us in our twenties and ever since. I enjoyed revisiting those times by writing this poem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sheila Sondik, poet and printmaker, lives in Bellingham, Washington. Her poetry has appeared in CALYX, Bracken, Raven Chronicles, Pontoon Poetry, frogpond, and many other journals and anthologies, including I Sing the Salmon Home, edited by Rena Priest, published by Empty Bowl. Egress Studio Press published her first chapbook, Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poetry from The Yearling, in 2013. A chapbook of Golden Shovel is forthcoming from The Poetry Box in 2024. Her artwork and links to her poetry are available at sheilasondik.com.

Ragamuffins and Misfits by Carole Johnston (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Ragamuffins and Misfits
by Carole Johnston

was it the
ginger or was it the
cinnamon?

ancient…healing…spices

was it the honey
that drew a crew of ragamuffin
misfits and

hippies into my kitchen?

was it Thanksgiving or was it
Christmas when we gathered
friends and strangers who had

nowhere else to go?

childless outlanders miles away
from families…to our rented
Victorian with a huge…hole…

in the tall oak walls?

did we try to cook a turkey?
maybe not…but I
remember baking spicy

brown gingerbread men
in my family tradition
(were we all a bit

lost?)

I sliced the pattern with a knife
so the cookies were
wiggly crooked sharp

piquant scent enveloping house

a crowd gathered around
the hot oven waiting for
those sweet ginger men to

hop

right

out

PHOTO: “Gingerbread People” by Zerbor.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Many young people lived in communal houses when I was young, in the 1970s. It seemed we had all run away from home, looking for family wherever we could find it. The day I baked gingerbread for that crowd of hippies, I shared a bit of my family tradition and we all felt at home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carole Johnston’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Focusing on Japanese short form poetry (haiku, tanka, haibun, tanka prose and haiga), Carole has published in many prominent journals, including Frog Pond, Cattails—Journal of International Haiku and Tanka Society, Ribbons Tanka Journal, Moonbathing a Journal of Women’s Tanka, Drifting Sands Haibun, Atlas Poetica, and others. Her poetry collections include Journeys: Getting Lost (Finishing Line Press), Purple Ink: A Childhood in Tanka (Finishing Line Press), Manic Dawn (Wildflower Poetry Press), Midnight Butterfly and Other Juxtapositions (Alien Buddha Press).“Ragamuffins and Misfits” is one of many brief, poetry and prose, memoirs that will be included in her next collection.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, poem by Nina Bennett (ME, AT 17 Poetry and Prose Series)

Bridge Over Troubled Water
by Nina Bennett

I was just seventeen, 1970, an unsettled year.
While I pose for a yearbook head shot, reports
of My Lai explode, five of the Chicago Seven
are convicted. Paul McCartney reveals the breakup
of the Beatles, Nixon announces invasion of Cambodia.
Kent State massacre leaves four dead the day we
rehearse for commencement. In between antiwar protests
and battles of the bands at the fire hall, I manage
to graduate from high school. Jimi Hendrix hurls
guitar riffs across the Isle of Wight in August, dies
in September as I watch Five Easy Pieces for the third time.
Two weeks later Janis overdoses. By December,
when the first tenants move into the World Trade Center’s
North Tower, I have turned eighteen.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Me, high school graduation, 1970, prior to donning cap and gown

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The events of 1970, my 17th year, shaped me in ways still relevant today. It was interesting to explore the critical juxtaposition of life-changing events and ordinary ones, endings and beginnings. “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” released in 1970, was Simon & Garfunkel’s final studio album. The title track won five Grammy Awards, while the complete record won Album of the Year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 
Delaware native Nina Bennett is the author of Sound Effects (2013, Broadkill Press Key Poetry Series). Her poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in publications that include Gargoyle, I-70 Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Bryant Literary Review, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Philadelphia Stories, and The Broadkill Review. Awards include 2014 Northern Liberties Review Poetry Prize, and second-place in poetry book category from the Delaware Press Association (2014). Nina is a founding member of the TransCanal Writers (Five Bridges, A Literary Anthology).

Born To Be Wild, poem by Nina Bennet (WHEN I HEAR THAT SONG Series)

Born To Be Wild
by Nina Bennett

We piled into my mother’s ice blue
Bonneville convertible, lowered
the top, cruised. Gas was fifty cents
a gallon. Radio blared Steppenwolf.
Our kazoos honked, squawked
in harmony to the high E chord
stretched like a tightrope
over the organ solo. I was a newly licensed
cowgirl, determined to last eight seconds,
to conquer Main Street with my posse,
bare legs stuck to creamy leather seats.
Our hair whipped across our cheeks,
stung our eyes, caught in the corners
of our Slickered lips. Vapor trails
of squeals and giggles streamed behind us.
We rounded the corner by the Deer Park,
passed the library, breezed down
Delaware Avenue, cool as mint
chocolate chip ice cream.

SOURCE: Originally published in The Broadkill Review (2011), Volume 5 Issue 5.

PHOTO: The author at 17.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Every time I hear this song (“Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf, 1968), I am instantly transported to the summer after I got my driver’s license. My girlfriends and I would drive around the same loop of our small town for hours, blasting the car radio, and scrounging up change to buy gas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Delaware native Nina Bennett is the author of Sound Effects (2013, Broadkill Press Key Poetry Series). Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Napalm and Novocain, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Houseboat, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Philadelphia Stories, and The Broadkill Review. Awards include 2014 Northern Liberties Review Poetry Prize, second-place in poetry book category from the Delaware Press Association (2014), and a 2012 Best of the Net nomination.

Key to the Highway, Poem by Mark Halliday

KEY TO THE HIGHWAY
Mark Halliday

I remember riding somewhere in a fast car

with my brother and his friend Jack Brooks

and we were listening to Layla & Other Love Songs

by Derek & the Dominos. The night was dark,

dark all along the highway. Jack Brooks was 

a pretty funny guy, and I was delighted

by the comradely interplay between him and my brother,

but I tried not to show it for fear of inhibiting them.

I tried to be reserved and maintain a certain

dignity appropriate to my age, older by four years.

They knew the Dominos album well having played the cassette

many times, and they knew how much they liked it.

As we rode on in the dark I felt the music was,

after all, wonderful, and I said so

with as much dignity as possible. “That’s right,”

said my brother. “You’re getting smarter,” said Jack.

We were listening to “Bell Bottom Blues”

at that moment. Later we were listening to

“Key to the Highway,” and I remembered how

my brother said, “Yeah, yeah.” And Jack sang

one of the lines in a way that made me laugh.

I am upset by the fact that that night is so absolutely gone.

No, “upset” is too strong. Or is it.

But that night is so obscure—until now

I may not have thought of that ride once

in eight years—and this obscurity troubles me.

Death is going to defeat us all so easily.

Jack Brooks is in Florida, I believe,

and I may never see him again, which is

more or less all right with me; he and my brother

lost touch some years ago. I wonder

where we were going that night. I don’t know;

but it seemed as if we had the key to the highway.

…from Mark Halliday‘s poetry collection Little Star (William Morrow & Co., 1987), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Mark Halliday is an American poet, professor and critic. He is author of five collections of poetry, most recently Keep This Forever (Tupelo Press, 2008). His honors include serving as the 1994 poet in residence at The Frost Place, inclusion in several annual editions of The Best American Poetry series and of the Pushcart Prize anthology, receiving a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, and winning the 2001 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mirror Talk, Memoir by Barbara Alfaro

MIRROR TALK

Memoir by Barbara Alfaro

I don’t have as much time for reading as I’d like – if it were up to me, I’d read as a full-time occupation, eight hours a day. Most of my reading these days is work related – material I’m editing, manuscripts I’m evaluating, or reference materials for writing projects. But once in a while I’m able to spend time with a book that’s so enjoyable the pages just breeze by – and, I’ll admit, books like these aren’t easy to find. I’m happy to report I recently encountered a book that succeeded on all fronts – beautiful prose, laugh-out-loud humor, as well as depth and introspection. The book is Mirror Talk, a memoir by Barbara Alfaro – winner of the 2012 IndieReader Discovery Award.

In the approximately 30,000-word book, available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle versions, Alfaro covers a lot of territory – from her Catholic girlhood in New York during the 1950s, her career as an actor and director during the 1960s and 1970s, and her eventual development as a poet, playwright, and writer.

The Mirror Talk chapter entitled “Make Mine Cognac” about an experimental play Alfaro appeared in was the funniest story I’ve read in years – and had me laughing, and laughing, and laughing out loud. Alfaro’s sharp, witty writing style is reminiscent of the wisecracking reporter Hildy Johnson in the Ben Hecht comedy His Girl Friday or even the ultimate wit – Dorothy Parker herself.

About the experimental play “smuggled from behind the Iron Curtain,” Alfaro writes: “After weeks of rehearsal, it became depressingly clear that no one in the cast had the slightest idea of what the play was about…the director said something about ‘symbolic juxtaposition.’ Finally, one of the symbols clanged. ‘What the hell is this play about?’ The director smiled that knowing, smug smile only directors and successful orthodontists seem able to accomplish…”

If you’re looking for a quick, fun read with a lot of heart and soul, check out Mirror Talk by Barbara Alfaro, available at Amazon.com. The Kindle version, available, here is just $1.99!

Los Angeles Notebook, Essay by Joan Didion

LOS ANGELES NOTEBOOK (Excerpt)

Essay by Joan Didion

It is three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and 105 degrees and the air so thick with smog that the dusty palm trees loom up with a sudden and rather attractive mystery. I have been playing in the sprinklers with the baby and I get in the car and go to Ralphs Market on the corner of Sunset and Fuller wearing an old bikini bathing suit. This is not a very good thing to wear to the market but neither is it, at Ralphs on the corner of Sunset and Fuller, an unusual costume. Nonetheless a large woman in a cotton muumuu jams her cart into mine at the butcher counter. “What a thing to wear to the market,” she says in a loud but strangled voice. Everyone looks the other way and I study a plastic package of rib lamb chops and she repeats it. She follows me all over the store, to the Junior Foods, to the Dairy Products, to the Mexican Delicacies, jamming my cart whenever she can. Her husband plucks at her sleeve. As I leave the checkout counter, she raises her voice one last time: “What a thing to wear to Ralphs,” she says.

“Los Angeles Notebook” by Joan Didion is found in her collection of essays Slouching Toward Bethlehem, available at Amazon.com.

Photo: Joan Didion and her daughter Quintana Roo Dunne photographed for Life Magazine in 1972 by Julian Wasser.

ALL SEWN UP: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Viv from Live.Grow.Nourish.Create was the first to comment on yesterday’s post about Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, a novel by Dai Sijie — and wins her very own free copy, compliments of Silver Birch Press.

On her blog, Viv calls herself “a constantly evolving work-in-progress.” Right now, she is all about art, quilts, education, books, dharma, nature, motherhood, community, poetry, music, love, friendship.

Hope you enjoy the book, Viv!

READERS STAY TUNED FOR OUR NEXT BOOK GIVEAWAY! 

Bukowski and Cupcakes

From Chapter 17 of Charles Bukowski’s Scarlet by PAMELA “CUPCAKES” WOOD

“…With Bukowski, I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted. He tolerated just about anything and everything — loud music, outside noise, distractions, boozing, pill popping, singing, or dancing on the tables. There were no rules and no limits — and I liked it that way…I felt as if I were in a safe harbor, where no one would judge me…Most of the time, life was fun with Bukowski — a crazy, relaxed, free-for-all.”

Find the book at Amazon.com here.

Photo courtesy of Pamela “Cupcakes” Wood