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.

La Cocina

The aroma of garlic and onion
garlic and parsley
garlic and butter
garlic in everything, it’s the foundation

floods the walls, it soaks
into the teeth
the warmth of the kitchen
illuminates all the spaces

sitting in the heart of the house
the smell of garlic and onion
and parsley and butter
on the table now theres
a mountain of milanesas
a sea of smashed potatoes.

My mom doesn’t hug you.

My mom knows only one language
with the garlic, the onion, the parsley and the butter
she tells you all of the things that she can’t say.

---

Over the Table

There is something missing and
I’m not sure what it is.

There’s salad and french fries
there’s burgers and good beer.

I dare to say there is far too many options
the noise, the people, the songs are all the same.

The aroma passes you by
the disappointment: that’s not your plate!

Everything flows like it should but
there is something missing.

The check in front of your face
lets you know it’s time to go.

The waiters look at you now, anxious
you ate, you paid: the transaction is over.

There is something missing and I realize
when we stay seated, laughing and in between talks

That what they don’t have and don’t share
boils down to a simple word: sobremesa.

---

Agustina Van Thienen is poet from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a first-year MFA student at The New School and has been living in NYC for three years. Since moving countries her writing centers around language, displacement and adaptation. Her work has previously appeared in Papers Publishing.

Wake up on Saturday and doom scroll through the endless barrage of colors and textures and
dopamine orgasms of a too-quick-cut-too-bright-lit bowl of smearing yogurt, exploding yolk,
and bread that rips open like insects shedding their exoskeleton in a time lapse. Drool a little bit
on your pillowcase.

Go grocery shopping and fantasize about the kind of person you would transform into with just
the right food purchase. Casually scan the contents of other peoples’ carts and think about what
it’s like to cook in their kitchen, to feed their spouses, to wash up afterwards in the dimly lit post-
apocalyptic smokey sunset glow of a blissfully quiet sink full of bubbles and licked clean
dinnerware.

On Sunday, strain your yogurt by pouring it into a colander or mesh strainer lined with a clean
dish towel. Fold the edges of the linen over the yogurt and lay a plate on top, followed by
another heavier object. Allow to drain into a large bowl or directly into the sink.

Optional: If draining directly into the sink, be sure to scold your waste of this high-protein
byproduct.

Check the yogurt thickness after several hours, stirring and scraping the contents of the towel to
quicken the process.

Have an edible and crank up Joywave and bounce around the kitchen wearing the version of
yourself you used to make yourself be 24/7. Be bubbly be creative be loud be fussy be joyous.
Dirty too many dishes and use too many tea towels and relentlessly work your way through the
spoils of your shopping victory like a machete-wielding warrior in Act III of her vendetta against
vegetation.

In a mediumish pot, melt down a pound of butter. Allow it to gently bubble over very low heat.
Forget it a few times. Remember it again when it reminds you, popping bright and sharp and
stinging as it lands on your arm. It’s done when it no longer steams or bubbles. Filter it in some
rinkydink way — try pouring it through a tea strainer first, then get clarified butter all over the
counter. Filter it a second time through the same tea strainer, but into a larger receiving vessel.
Poke your index finger into insanely gold liquid to rescue a burnt bit of milk solid and lick it
off. Moan.

Put about a cup of clarified butter into a new pot. Hiss yes, it’s fine to the mother-voice in your
head. Peel a shallot, slice it root to tip, and thinly slice into half-moons. Scatter them into their
golden butter bath and heat over low, gently increasing the temp until small bubbles gather
around the shallots and turn them into shimmery oniony diamonds. Dump a bunch of chili flakes
on top, stir excitedly.

While you make the chili butter, consider the yogurt. Scrape around the sides of your tea towel
and eyeball the whey that’s collected in your bowl. Consider saving some. Dump it. Consider
saving the rest of the whey that will be pressed out. Know that you won’t.

When it’s the thickness that you like, scrape it down the sides of the tea towel and into a new
bowl. Admire the sink full of dirty dishes. Feel the edible kicking in around the back of your
eyes and think about feeling sexy in domesticity, licking a little bit of yogurt from the spatula
after cleaning the tea towel and doing it unnecessarily slowly and even more unnecessarily
erotically for nobody but you. Zest a whole lemon into the yogurt.

Did you forget about the chili butter? Grate some lemon zest in there, too.

Juice the lemon into the yogurt and use your hand to catch the seeds and pulp. Use the micro
planer to grate a clove of garlic in and roughly chop the leaves from a fistful of dill into it as
well. Whip it together and leave bits of the dill unincorporated, like little green hotel guests
relaxing in a giant pool of microbes.

From the under-corner cabinet that is loath to find actual functional usefulness, pull out 5 deli
containers that are the size of a handful of goldfish, an actual portion of hummus, most of a cut
up apple, half a grilled cheese sandwich on Martin’s potato bread. Split your yogurt up between
4 of them and pour your chili shallot lemon butter aphrodisiac into the fifth.

Meticulously, and then eventually with the fervor of a second grader, label the contents of each
lid with lime green painter’s tape and MORNING YOG and CHILI BUTT.

Sleep with a heart as full as the contents of your intention-set meal-prepped refrigerator.

The next morning, bring a shallow pan of water to boil. Add a splash of whatever vinegar you
have and reduce it to a low simmer. Crack an egg into a small dish — have a moment of
inspiration and dump the egg from the dish into a mesh strainer. Watch as absolutely no runny
egg white drips from the strainer. Pour the egg back into its small dish, then gently stir the
simmering water to create a tropical storm vortex, slipping the egg into the eye of the storm.

Poach the egg for 3 minutes.

While the egg poaches, retrieve yesterday’s ritual and dollop the MORNING YOG into your
favorite big bowl. Smear it around artistically and foolishly. Microwave about a tablespoon of
the CHILI BUTT and don’t forget to scoop the shallots from the bottom of the container.

Cut 2 thick slices of sourdough and cram them into the toaster.

Check on the egg. Observe how the top has failed to become opaque because you didn’t put
enough water into the pan. Swirl gently, then with some panic, spooning water over its basking
face in the last minute of cooking to close the yolky portal.

Use a slotted scooping device of whatever sort you have to retrieve your egg and place it, wholly
opaque and not dripping wet, onto the yogurty bed you have prepared for it. Lazily, and with
little regard for the friendly fire upon the butcher block, drop spoonful’s of shallot and chili and
butter all over everything.

Look at the mess you’ve made in the too-bright kitchen cut through with steamy swirls of light.

Attack everything with the toast, and revel in your joyous existence.

---

Hannah Hawkins is a native North Carolinian exploring the past, present, and future of Southern identity through food, writing, music, photography, and textiles. She lives in Durham where she spends her time experimenting in the garden, kitchen, and workshop. 

unbound, he is his own person, with hiccups
growing fast and fathomless into bibs, called
neckerchiefs too, each of a different shape or
size, soaks the spills of indulgence, scatters in
crumbs or drops from a straw of banana goo
lands on a serviette saying, “I am a blessing”
egg yolk stains combined with mango shake
a ravenous dribble camouflaged in sunlight
each shade as stubborn as haldi root sworn
for its potent properties, proven to be just
the right antidote to exhaustion; ayurvedic
aunt as opinionated as his refusal of bottle
and aversion to mashed dal, a slurpy mess
of a fountain, there is long windedness to
mealtimes, a mosaic aftermath on the floor
a scrabble of all things baby; not too pretty
herbarium of flavors, handprints on doors
threaded into soft tresses is pure coconut
oil and strings of pureed squash, splashed
across our faces, emblem of healthy habits
the custard walls are a collage of loveliness
texture is how food feels to virgin papillae
accepting or rejecting peas, carrots, grainy
or watery or crunchy, sticky like forbidden
honey, an inexhaustible potluck of senses
even humble oatmeal laced with cinnamon

story time
mashed residue
of heartbreak

---

When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her second full-length collection, Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press and her newest full-length collection, Witching Hour is coming out in 2024 with Glass Lyre Press. She lives in North Carolina and proudly serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News.

It’s almost Christmas
and everyone is unpacking:

the lost box of heirloom ornaments
that can finally be displayed
on a tree set up in balmy November;
the extemporized nativity
with its statues of St. Francis and Santa Claus
added a few years ago
even though they weren’t actually at the birth
(but petal-pink Jesus is missing again
and will need to be replaced).

Unpacking gifts sent by out-of-town relatives.
Unpacking gifts ordered online.

But what everyone really wants to unpack
are the yearly complaints about the current price
of hojas, and chiles, and nixtamal.
Along with all the moans and groans
come the empty threats:
“Sólo haremos tamales para la familia.
We’re not giving any away,”
even though the guy who lives down the street,
whose name and family nobody knows,
will end up with a bag of red and green.

Every year, new gripes about making tamales,
the threats to buy them from a bakery,
but after eating a plate of one too many
on a clear and starry Nochebuena,
with a cup of rompope or diet soda
we all agree that—despite inflation—
the sweet and the spicy were worth every penny.

---

Charles Haddox (he/him) lives in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, and has family roots in both countries. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals including Birdcoat Quarterly, Volume Poetry, and Vita Poetica. charleshaddox.wordpress.com