Food: Poems for Kids

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk
and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic
and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

You turn the kitchen
tap’s metallic stream
into tropical drink,
extra sugar whirlpooling
to the pitcher-bottom
like gypsum sand.
Purplesaurus Rex, Roarin’
Rock-A-Dile Red, Ice Blue
Island Twist, Sharkleberry Fin;
on our tongues, each version
keeps a section, like tiles
on the elemental table.
In ninth grade, Sandra
employed a jug of Black Cherry
to dye her straightened
bangs burgundy.
When toddlers swallow you,
their top lips mustache in color
as if they’ve kissed paint.
The trendy folks can savor
all that imported mango nectar
and health-market juice.
We need factory-crafted packets,
unpronounceable ingredients,
a logo cute enough to hug,
a drink unnaturally sweet
so that, on the porch,
as summer sun recedes,
Granddad takes out his teeth
to make more mouth to admit you.

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

It is tamale Saturday.
The day the colors of the rainbow break
b r e a d.            Today these Brown hands will be coated
In masa and Mama and memory.

A family patterned like
plaid on stripes will go to war with corn
husks and Grandma Lupe's recipe    h a n d w r i t i n g.   
Today I am not artist. Nor social

media handle. I am not
Black Boy Joy. Nor Brown Boy dead. I am
a   b a b y                before its first gulp of tap water. The oldest cousin
still hesitant to clink forks at the adult table.

Today we pick up the place
mats Tia and Big Mama and Papa Sisto left
behind. We’ve never been the same since they    d i e d.       
We grew into something stronger

and weaker at the same time,
most ourselves when colors don’t
m a t c h       but meat is tender, and masa has no clumps,
and air is clean like a mind

that has reconciled with its last meal.

The cricket to the corn-crake came one day,
Shivering, yet buzzing in his wanton way,
        And said: “I’m slain
By hunger, brother, turn thou not from me;
’Tis winter, and I only beg of thee
        A little grain.”

The corn-crake grinned and said in tone sublime:
“Where wert thou hidden in the harvest time,
        Thou dinning drone?
Why didst thou not come with us to the fields
To gather something for thy winter meals
        Of what had grown?”

“O, I was entertaining with my rhymes
The vineyards, and the fig trees, and the thymes
        The summer long.”
“No then,” replied the corn-crake, “not a seed
Have I for such as thou; go home and feed
        Upon thy Song.”

Watching little Henry, 6, scoop up blueberries
and shovel them into his mouth, possessed.

I’m so glad I brought blueberries—wish my kids
could/would eat them. Cal can’t; Simone won’t.

Henry’s sisters Lucy & Jane took turns feeding each
other goldfish crackers and sips of juice. 

Arms around each other’s neck and back. Tiny things.
I  wish my daughter had a sister like that

and my son a nervous system that let him walk
and munch berries. Sometimes I can’t bear

all the things Cal doesn’t get to do. I want to curse
everything I can’t give him. 

Admire/compare/despair—that’s not the most real 
feeling I’m feeling, is it?  I feel joy in Henry’s joy. 

Blueberries for the child who wants them.
There’s all this energetic sweetness, enough to go around,

to give and taste and trust. More than enough.
For Cal too.  I want to remember this.  

My children seem to subsist on music and frosting. 
Where there’s frosting, there’s cake. 

Where there’s music, someone chose to make a song 
over all other things on this earth. 

1.

On a picnic table, in Pine, Arizona, 
a Bear, Makwa, sits and meditates. 
Occasionally, with menu in hand, 
he scans the reddish-brown landscape 
          that’s
partially draped with snow, a climatic 
rarity. But it’s heavenly here, he resolves, 
adding, inittawetti-menwi-bematesiyani, 
that's why I'm feeling good. After 
          ordering 
New York steak, jumbo prawns
and woodland mushrooms, a bottle 
of cabernet is placed on a cedar deer 
rack. While dipping the sopapilla 
          in 
honey, he reads the wine called
Zah was highly coveted by Bonnie, 
the 1930s gangster. The ruse evokes
a smile. Then, on a cart that’s 
          wheeled 
in beside him, a miniature cast-iron
stove with its legs embedded 
in ice crackles as two potatoes 
revolve and bake. From a silver 
          radio 
with a wobbly antennae, 
a saxophone is heard faintly, 
with Mayall singing “Going 
Back to California.” Nostalgia, 
          laments
the D. J. Epic, graphic 
nostalgia.    

2.

Soon, sparks fly from the microwave’s 
slender chimney, reminding him of the time 
he gave Black Eagle Childs a tune called 
Askotewi-Ttimani, Fire Boat. Akin 
          to
lovers separated by a wide river, 
whispers Nemese, Fish, the butter’s 
fragrance is corn tassel sweet 
and the sour cream senses earth 
          tremors 
akameeki, overseas. Combustible
emotions, you could say, through 
supernatural alchemy. And per 
etiquette, the handles of your
          silverware 
are designed with turquoise 
and corral inlay. “Say, I seem to 
have forgotten,” he asks, “but what
do they mean?”           

3.

From a nearby table, a Mawewa, Wolf 
politely intercedes: If I may answer
for Mayrin—once the shell-shock subsides, 
you'll recall the East is a star and the South 
          is 
a galaxy falling as snow into a dish that 
breathes, especially at noon; and the West 
is a door of purple seashells, with the North 
being a lodge made with pillars of swirling
          ice 
quills. Natawinoni, Medicine. These gifts 
will keep apoplectic reactions at bay. 
“Wekone? What?” More so, if by birth 
your heart is exposed. “Jesus Christ! 
          How’d 
you know?” Nanotti-meko-Makwa-webi-
nenekenetama-wettikweni, Eventually, 
Bear begins reflecting on where he’d 
been. In Tanzania and Mozambique, 
          rows 
of white string that guided land 
mine-detecting rats over dry, ochre-
colored fields resembled gardens 
being prepped for spring 
          planting 
back home. Beautiful, 
speckled atamina, corn. 

4.

Remarkably, rats can also detect TB, 
said the Wakotte, Fox. “They can?”   
Moreover, in the desert where you 
visited, a waterfall came back to life 
          from 
a single raindrop, the one that travelled
with you on a Spider’s web, floating 
in the wind over distant mountains, 
oceans and clouds. Manetwi-kiyaki-
          niittawiyakwi, 
There’s still much we have to do. 
Because the Earth beneath our feet, 
Kokomesenana, our Grandmother, 
struggles to heal herself. Thus, 
          in 
the moment before the Northern 
Lights glow fiery red, arcing over 
us en route to Antarctica, you’ll ask 
in a solemn, musical voice that 
          guidance 
be granted in perpetuum to the culture,
language, religion and history of your 
children and their grandchildren. 
He was contemplating all of this 
          when
an old, toothless gentleman in 
a large suitcoat approached 
and asked, are you Randolph Scott? 
After saying “Yes,” an armor-clad 
         horse 
became audibly restless at the four
dragon-headed dogs staring at three 
galley sails billowing on the hinterland 
horizon.