Poetry By Eleanore Tisch
Kitchen, My Country
Thick sliced
light and ripe
tomato mottling
through the window
Our sweat swells
terracotta salt dish
sat on the sill cracks
black pepper speckles
shadows ‘cross that
perfect single
freckle
on your
bottom lip
Never more a patriot than when sandwich
making summer post meridian
linens billow on the table
laughing wide as pasture
arranging conscious sunspots
on the counter
You so careful
with the fragile
vase of dahlias
gifted
by our neighbor
Light so viscous
steam ribbons visible
off our homemade hour
glass syrup rises
so brittle
our kilter
the Persian blue
ceramic plate
spun atop
your finger
brought up
from the basement
just this morning
~
It is a poet’s training to be precise and ochre
all year round
tend to rain
alter recipes
adapt ratios
wet to dry
It is a poet’s training, too, to lug around
a severed tongue
still humming
in one hundred
percent humidity
~
Sometimes making lunch
I feel my ghost dislodge
and lurch to find you
clouding down my buckled
mouthful my jammed
kneecap holding
still our flag
at half-mast
Hilt of your chef’s knife
edged against my appetite
you stood behind my small
my elongated instinct
cut last night’s
lighting left
out on the
butcher’s
block
Your hands
pressed my hips
at the hinge
kneeling
field aflame
to harvest one
last storm
for supper
You leaned down
kissed my carotid
while you could.
Hopemonger
Slip it to
your friend when
they least expect it
pass the note
across the landscape
let it linger
ring louder—
we know we know
the world
burns and the systems
rot and
the fire at the creek burns
too and a simple
common sparrow passes
between us
the fire and I and my friends
and I know and I know
I won’t live to see capitalism
collapse. I know it will
get worse before if
it ever gets better.
I know what’s
coming is
going
to kill
me
and kill me and kill me.
But someone slipped it to me
when I least expected
a note across the landscape
that reads “fire
at the creek tonight”
