Angel Food Cake, poem by Jeannie E. Roberts (MY SWEET WORD Series)

Angel Food Cake
by Jeannie E. Roberts

          “Out of love I made you a cake. Also out of milk,
          eggs, flour, sugar, and vanilla.” ―Jarod Kintz

The food of angels was placed before my feet;
from its center, a single candle rose. Baked
within my frosted celebration: 1¼ cups egg

whites, 1½ cups sugar, 1 cup cake flour, 1¼
teaspoons cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon vanilla
extract, ¼ teaspoon almond extract, and ¼

teaspoon salt. My maternal grandmother had
made me an angel food cake, and she made it
out of love. Clinging to her dress, cloth diaper

askew, I sat shyly unaware of my privileged
life and how good I had it. It was October
1957, when men ruled the roost and women

didn’t. My grandma was different; she was
tough as nails and outspoken as hell. Orphaned
at age twelve, she worked as a department store

clerk in Stockholm, Sweden, until she married
and gave birth to my mother. At age twenty-four,
she emigrated to the United States and made

a home for her family in Minnesota, all while
learning English and helping my grandfather
get through high school, college, and then dental

school by doing others’ laundry and shoveling coal.
Later, she did the books for my grandpa’s dental
practice because she had a head for numbers.

I can now appreciate her determined spirit,
practical nature, forthright demeanor, and
her angel food cake.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My maternal grandmother, Edith Malvina Karlsson Smith, and me, celebrating my first birthday with an angel food cake, 3811 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 10, 1957.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My first task in writing this poem was finding a photograph of me with something sweet. It took a while, but I found one photo of me sitting on my maternal grandmother’s lap; it was taken on my first birthday, October 10, 1957. Before I could complete the poem, I needed a few facts about my grandmother, which the poem is centered around, so I asked my sister, Mary, for more information. We emailed back-and-forth, and Mary was able to provide quite a bit of detail about our grandmother, Edith Malvina Karlsson Smith, born on April 29, 1900, in Filipstad, Warmland, Sweden.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeannie E. Roberts lives in an inspiring rural setting near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Her second book of poetry, Beyond Bulrush, a full-length collection, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press in 2015. She is also the author of Nature of it All, a poetry chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and the author and illustrator of Let’s Make Faces!, a children’s book. She draws, paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. Learn more about Jeannie at www.jrcreative.biz.

Sturbridge, Massachusetts — poem by Joanne Corey (My Perfect Vacation Series)

Sturbridge, Massachusetts
by Joanne Corey

people envision honeymoons
in romantic cities
             Paris
             Rome
tropical islands
             Caribbean
             Hawaiian
wonder-of-the-world-and-traditional-honeymoon-capital
             Niagara Falls

we chose an 1830’s living-history museum
             village green with church and general store
             blacksmith, cobbler, potter
             draft horses pulling a hay wagon through a covered bridge
             water-powered sawmill, grist mill, carding mill
             pastures, fields, barns
             farmhouse kitchen with creamery attached

perfect for a pair of New England history buffs
with limited time and budget
on their first-ever vacation together

PHOTOGRAPH: The bride and groom cutting the cake, shortly before leaving for Sturbridge Smith College Alumnae House, Northampton, Massachusetts (June 1982).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanne Corey lives and writes in Vestal, New York, where she is active with the Binghamton Poetry Project. Her 2015 publications include the spring 2015 anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project, Candles of Hope anthology (GWL Publishing, U.K.), the “All About My Name” poetry series from Silver Birch Press, and Wilderness House Literary Review fall quarterly. She invites you to visit her eclectic blog at topofjcsmind.wordpress.com.

Chocolate Cake and Inner Peace, Quote by Dave Barry

“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M’s and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.”

DAVE BARRY

Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Dave Barry‘s new novel, Insane City — which the publisher has characterized as a “dark comic masterpiece” — will be released on January 29th. Check it out at Amazon.com.

Let Them Write Cakes, New Yorker Cartoon by Henry Martin

I wonder if the “copy” on these cakes was a result of a Craigslist writing gig — “Writer of snappy, to-the-point copy needed for high-visibility project…” (I’ve been there…)

Wind and Wedding Cake by Jesús Salvador Treviño

“A capricious breeze escaped from a small hole in the ground in Mrs. Romero’s front yard at precisely the place where more than a year before the sinkhole had erupted. The freakish wraith of wind rose from the vent and moved, snakelike, across the dichondra lawn and then began a slow ascent into the sky, traveling in a lazy spiral, like a hawk riding hot thermals, rising higher and higher, until the effervescent current was circiling high over the dilapidated wooden structure at 410 Calle Cuatro, which for forty-eight of her eighty-two years Mrs. Romero had called home.

 The breeze then suddenly plunged into a sharp dive, gathering speed and momentum as it descended, honing in on Mrs. Romero’s house like a precision arrow finding its bull’s eye. As the gust of wind reached the house, it found an opening in the kitchen window and burst through like a sprinter crossing the finish line.

Inside, the octogenarian was busy beating the special batter for the wedding cake she had committed to bake for Rudy Vargas and María López’s big wedding…With her back to the pastry cookbook that lay open to a recipe for “Golden Cream Wedding Cake,” she did not notice when the rascally draft swept over the cookbook, rustling its pages from page 231 to page 238, the recipe for “Three-Tier Chocolate Layer Cake…”

Note: The above excerpt is taken from the short story “A Boogie-Woogie Wedding Cake” by Jesús Salvador Treviño (Found in The Skyscraper that Flew and Other Stories. This remarkable collection is available at Amazon.com)

Painting: “Lady” by Isblahblah, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.