Food as Flowers (The Small Restaurant) by Tricia Marcella Cimera (PRIME MOVERS Series)

Food as Flowers (The Small Restaurant)
by Tricia Marcella Cimera

Tebsi  Kubba Kushari
Tabbouleh Schwarma —
names of food
like exotic flowers
from another place
at Chef Abdul, a small
family restaurant
where everyone
is One.
During Covid-19
they give away
kids meals, apples,
fresh bread —
food offered
like temple flowers
we receive
in cupped hands.

Previously appeared on the St. Charles Arts Council website (Illinois) in a slightly different version (May 2020).

PHOTO: Chef Abdul, Chef Abdul Mediterranean restaurant (St. Charles, Illinois). 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Chef Abdul and his family at Chef Abdul Mediterranean restaurant in St. Charles, Illinois, cook wonderful food that is Iraqi and Egyptian in origin. When they first opened, they gave away full meals to introduce their cuisine to the community. From the beginning of COVID-19, this small restaurant has gifted food to all.  They are hardworking immigrants, always smiling when people come in.  THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ABOUT, WHAT IT IS BUILT ON.  I’m the daughter of a Czech immigrant.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Published works have appeared in places ranging from the Buddhist Poetry Review to The Ekphrastic Review.  Her micro-chapbook called GO SLOW, LEONARD COHEN was released through the Origami Poems Project.  One of her poems was pleased to receive a recent Pushcart Prize and another was awarded a Best of the Net nomination.  She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, by a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box (also named Fox) in her front yard.  

Contemplating My Golden Years by Andrea Janelle Dickens (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

Contemplating My Golden Years
by Andrea Janelle Dickens

I would love to spin the wheel: to eat
monkey brain, a big durian, and rats (fresher
Tuesday through Friday), or try an extended
stay in a crime novel set next year, fiercely
fiercely undignified, an easy target. I’m not
into sex with a crackhead clown, a monster,
an ebola-infected spider monkey. (They’re not
too good in the sack). I don’t have a retirement
plan. It freaks me out. I’m making it up
as I go along. I contemplate what is a pet
and what is food? A grilled cheese sandwich
served me a steaming load of crap in spite of all
the terrible things I’ve said about the cat and dog.

I have little memory of eating the cobra heart.
I’m still pretty rough: heartbroken and appalled.
I hope to die watching you singing anarchy
from a table top with your shirt wrapped
around your head, with a very small,
very angry and rather athletic oyster.
Like a travelling band given license to kill.

SOURCE: Anthony Bourdain online chat, Washington Post (March 30, 2006).

IMAGE: Celebrity chef and culinary expert Anthony Bourdain.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I’ve always been fascinated with celebrity chefs, especially the polar figures of sophisticated, restrained Nigella Lawson and bad boy Anthony Bourdain. What I found really fascinating as I worked on these poems [find Nigella Lawson poem here] was how obvious it was that the language of Bourdain was all public and external; he lives his life in public. And the language of the interview with Lawson was private, domestic, and polite, even while hinting at darker truths beneath the surface of the words she spoke. I tried to capture these impressions as I worked the found words and phrases into these two poems.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrea Janelle Dickens recently moved to the Sonoran Desert, where she lives among the sunshine and saguaro cacti. Her work has appeared in Star 82, cakestreet, Ruminate, Caesura, and The Wayfarer, among others. She teaches at Arizona State University, and when she’s not teaching, she’s backpacking in foreign cities, making pottery in her ceramics studio, or tending hives of bees.

In Which I Contemplate Men And Vegetables by Andrea Janelle Dickens (Celebrity Free Verse Poetry Series)

In Which I Contemplate Men And Vegetables
by Andrea Janelle Dickens

The only vegetable men really like
is peas. There’s no turning back:
you will carry around Brussels
sprouts for people who don’t like
Christmas pudding. Most of the other
women in my position distilled something
simple. Something completely different.

My mother was a believer in
the strawberry cheesecake; at the end
of the day the women want to rebel,
be taken into care like cranberries.
They spat it out sort of viciously, sort of
graphically but with more broccoli
and the metallic taste of spinach.

I’m sort of trapped. As long as you
don’t think they’re going to help you,
(as if you wanted the child labor),
the flames get us to stir things, the luck
of being very cosmopolitan, very very
tired. And the only vegetable
men really like looks the same.

SOURCE: Nigella Lawson interview by Becky Anderson, CNN (April 19, 2010).

IMAGE: Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrea Janelle Dickens recently moved to the Sonoran Desert, where she lives among the sunshine and saguaro cacti. Her work has appeared in Star 82, cakestreet, Ruminate, Caesura, and The Wayfarer, among others. She teaches at Arizona State University, and when she’s not teaching, she’s backpacking in foreign cities, making pottery in her ceramics studio, or tending hives of bees.