Odds

Maybe not the redbuds
that barely made it through the winter
and now cloud the sky with purple,
but running into a friend
in a shop in a foreign city,
neither of your hotels on
that side of town,
and there was a woman
you crossed paths with
on your ways to separate meetings
whom you married three years later.
And yet so many are averse to gambling,
even though the odds,
even in Vegas,
are not nearly as ridiculously high.
Is it because the gods do not value
the calculated risk, the hoped-for
success? Does it need to be random
beyond imagination?
It was the day after your friend
got engaged, and your wife was
with you to hear the news. Who
could have foretold the four of you
sitting in the back of a gelateria
talking about mundane things,
how you and her fiancé
went to the same college,
how the three of them had cups—
chocolate, Stracciatella, some kind
of fruit—while you had
a coffee and coconut cone, all
of you consuming something
impossible, what would
both melt and last forever?

---

Gourmet

“coulant” of white asparagus and egg yolk

Smoother than mousse,
not quite as firm as custard—

beneath it, the yolk
you can’t yet see,

ready to spill from
itself at the slightest touch,

and then the colors
swirling together

beneath the surface.
Your mouth should

always respect,
savor,

connotations,
the way words,

considered carefully,
“measured,” they say,

like ingredients,
blend flavors,

as if you will never
get a second chance,

since the dish cannot be unmade,
as if the world—

this is true—
depends on it.

---

Jack Stewart was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University and was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His first book, No Reason, was published by the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Literary Review, Nimrod, Image, and others. He currently runs the Talented Writers Program at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

My retirement plan is a giant peach
fuzzy, plump, and perfect for canning,
braising, freezing, drying in

slices. I’d fashion a peach leather
jacket, sunset ombre over my shoulders –
smell heavenly, floating from place to

place, sweet Georgia summer shine
left in my wake. I’d make syrups and
elixirs to soothe what aches.

A peach is but a kiss on the cheek,
the blush that follows the
swell inside. I’d fall in love

endlessly. Write fruit and eat poetry
messily over the fallow ground. Kiss
every cheek. Hand out peach after

juicy peach, pits sprouting where
they are cherished most – in
loamy soil and a fearless heart.

---

Shadiyat Ajao is a poet based in Harlem. She holds an MFA from The New School and is currently an assistant editor for Conjunctions. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Blaze Vox Journal Online, and 3 Elements Literary Review. She firmly believes that rest is resistance and sends tweets sometimes @write_i_diyat.

These are the days we wish for,
we devour them like pans of Paella––
each ingredient passionately procured.
We chop and stir, perfect the rice and peppers,
bring the peas to a surprising pop.
We inhale every moment––extract
each clam and mussel from its shell, pluck
the spicy chorizo and seared chicken, suck
every last bit of salt and smoked paprika.

We ingest each hour like the crisp-crunch
of the socarrat—scrape the day bare
till there is nothing left
but to close our eyes and rest
before doing it all again
with fiery attention––
before it all turns to ///mush.

---

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in Peregrine, Gyroscope Review, Zig Zag Lit Mag, New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater: a journal of The New School, One Art, Please See Me and elsewhere. Laurie won first place in poetry at the 2023 Marblehead, MA Festival of the Arts. 

A Villanelle On Cooking at Home

Ingredients are laid out across the counter,
time twisted
up in aprons and cutting boards.

Thyme twisted
with patience
brewed in stocks and bones.

With patience, a fish is filet;
its skin screams
from the hot oil.

My skin screams
for a break
from the dishes.

For a break would mean
quiet halls
insecure in silence.

Quiet halls
that reverberate the rhythms
of the home engineer.

Reverberating the rhythms
of peeled healing
that leaves my eyes raw.

Of peeled healing,
ingredients are laid out across the counter
time twisted
up in aprons and cutting boards.

---

A ritual at the kitchen sink

Pomegranates stain rosewater and cane sugar;
crushed jewels that splatter pretty at the kitchen sink.

Wash my hands a new rhythm, one that has
a fondness for cacao cherry crisps at the kitchen sink.

Find my Truths kaleidoscoped in art
and bubbling stews in the kitchen. Sync

the worship of my Divinity.
Light blue candles sanctify the kitchen sink.

Roll beads of dried rose petals in pink salt.
A dice rolls into the kitchen. Cinque.

Arnica steeped relief for my hands
and worries that knot over the kitchen sink.

The first trees of my orchard,
incubating abundance at the kitchen sink.

---

Picking String Beans

It’s almost the Great Depression,
not quite the Grapes of Wrath.
Mama, my sister, brother and I

climb into an open-back,
wood-panel truck on Skid Row
for pickers. Twelve years old,

Mama’s eldest, I eye scruffy men
riding with us, while dreaming
what I might buy with today’s green –

maybe the Nancy Drew book,
The Secret of Red Gate Farm,
before Mom needs my money.

We brake and a farmhand shows us
our row. I pluck. Grueling and boring,
I’m drooling for lunch at ten.

n the sun’s firing line, I drop my arms.
Others march by with loaded containers.
Soldiers of the trenches, I’m gunning

for you, grabbing and bagging.
O how my body aches, nose itches dirt,
and I’ve tasted too many raw beans.

Nearby a boy yodels, Cold sodas for sale.
At double store prices, no-deposit,
no-return, I swallow my day’s pay.

---

Your Nettle, Naughty or Nice

Don’t brush gently against me, grasp my stalk
nnnnnnand I’ll lie flat. Then, bed me in a steamy bath.

My green lineage iron-willed as spinach. I’ll hemp
nnnnnn you up, settle your restless stomach with tea.

Sit on me and I might prickly-pink tattoo you,
nnnnnnjumping up and screaming to soothe your itch.

How about having me for dinner tonight?

Hard core, my hearts are caches of healthy chemistry.
nnnnnnDon’t boot me. Futile not to taste our fertile future.

Maybe I’m not your cultivated flower or fruit,
nnnnnnbut I’m stem spindly, my jagged sleeves spinning

to your sly wind’s breath. Don’t keep me in the woods.
nnnnnnHow about having me for dinner tonight?

Don’t just go for fancy, feather-headed ferns
nnnnnnor mind-tripping mushrooms. Don’t waste yourself,

pick me, a playful plateful. A morsel? More bang
nnnnnnfor your pluck. Mettle up, your garden’s shrinking!

How about having me for dinner tonight?

---

Denise Utt is a poet living in New York City. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, The MacGuffin Journal, and elsewhere.

That hamburger from hell
It did not go down well
Who knew a fast-food order
Could wreak gastric disorder?

The lettuce was too squishy
The patty tasted fishy
The cheese was chunky-chewy
The mayo grossly gooey.

The bun was three days stale
Which caused my soul to ail
The French fries stank of oil
And funky alu-foil.

I did not realize
How sauce can traumatize
God help my hurt papillae
Now everything tastes silly.

The pickles, super sour
Their brine fumes overpower
The odor left me dour
And retching in the shower.

I curse the baleful mustard
And how it lumped like custard
It left my taste buds flustered
Despite the gall I mustered.

A ruined appetite
Can make one’s phrasing trite
Long spells in the latrine
Have turned this poet mean!

---

Wael Almahdi is a poet, translator, and healthcare professional from Bahrain. In 2023, he won a High Commendation from the Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize. His Classical Arabic translations include work by Lewis Carroll (‘Jabberwocky’), Carl Jung (‘Seven Sermons to the Dead’, as yet unpublished), and Hanan Issa, the National Poet of Wales. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in ArabLit Quarterly, Copihue, Snakeskin, The Knight Letter, The Raven’s Perch, Ekstasis, Blue Minaret, The Ravi Magazine, and Beletra Almanako.