Let us munch on murgh biryani
or a tray of well-made mandi
sip some sour Turkish ayran
top it off with date-based candy

Grills, you gotta wrap them snugly –
in tandoori naan-afghani
add a raita, try a bite o’
barfi à la Hindustani

Start a food tour from yum Turkey
pass through Egypt and Beirut
land in Dubai, on to Mumbai
for falooda filled with fruit

Pulao, machboos, taht-el-jeder
dashing dishes – do them all
allied with some aloo methi,
plus a tad of desi daal

Aish and roti, khubz and sangak
fava beans with thick tameez
hearty hummus, rich as humus
coal seared lumps of goat-milk cheese

Mirch is merch for pepper lovers
can you take the heat of chilli?
one fun flake of fiery filfil’s
sure to leave your taste buds silly

Crave a beef-based Gulf hareesa
or Iraqi rice-stuffed koosa?
the Levant has sweet harissa
which in Egypt’s called basbousa

Fenugreek and racy spice
Roz-bej-jej from Lebanon
juicy sides of jasmine rice
Butter-chicken-baptised naan

Slabs of tah– plus –deeg or –cheen
kabab barg arrayed on chelo
one blue bowl of mast-o-khiyar,
cap the meal with chai or helo

Brew a batch of pitch-black gahwa
proffer cups with your right hand
furnish guests with heated halwa
spicy karak on demand.

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Arabic translations include work by Lewis Carroll (‘Jabberwocky’), Carl Jung (‘Seven Sermons to the Dead’, as yet unpublished), and Hanan Issa, the National Poet of Wales.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.

An Ode

She is work horse, single driven.
She is manifest. She is whalebone and
beating heart behind a chicken breast.
She is laced, with coral lettuce, frilled.

She is bread, white toasted,
one slice soft, the other roasted.
For the squish and the crunch,
what they call the salle hard and soft.

She is mayonnaise – cold spread.
Tomatoes.

She is capers. She is the onion.
A toothpick if you want more,
later on,
retrieved from teeth,
remembering, the above you’ve tasted.

Salivate.

As I have done.
Hearing the word ‘lunch.’
Fall on said pointed petard.
Then, carry on.

She is stacked, don’t the mind the fries –
gone soon they’ve finished oiled hiss.

For She,
she is a work horse
(I never
use the whip.)
She is stable, nourishing, a
Favored Pumpernick.

And I forever hungry, seeking,
Sing odes
Of condiment!

For the mayo, and
What
Lucky sandwich
She bestows her gifts.

SARA BARNETT is a writer, actor, and foodie. With a new short story soon coming to IAMB LIT and several poems appearing in current issues of INDELIBLE LIT and REAPPARATION JOURNAL, “For the Mayo” is her first ode to a condiment. For a full list of publications as well as other creative exploits, feel free to check out more at SARABARNETT.NET.

we made ribs on a sunday.
just felt like the right thing to do.

cleaned out the pit, stacked
charcoal with the paper bag bits;

a fiery pyramid to
bless this food.

she came thru with the brats. also
had a taste for them hot links

farmer john. —ADD’EM!—
he prepared potato salad

a la BIG MOMS. he also found a can of beef chili,
HOT! added brown sugar + syrup + sauce BBQ & mustard

cause, we made ribs on a sunday.
this how we do things round here

Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. His work has appeared in online literary magazines Cool Beans Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Muse-Pie Press’ Shot Glass Issue #41, the Rising Phoenix Review, The Amazine, University of Baltimore’s Welter Literary Journal, and JMWW, and will also appear in the forthcoming Moonstone Arts Center anthology Which Side Are You On?!, With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.

in remembrance

Two matching cans of peaches in the cupboard
I can make that work said the chef’s eager hands
Flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, butter for the crumble
Said the kitchen : for your cobbler, we got all that

Second go round went with a can of diced pineapples
Upside down cake like taste please come inside
This time add the cake mix on top said the sibling
Didn’t forget lemon extract and that sweet sugar brown

One hour later :
Science forged
Let them taste it
Foot stomps/Eyes closed/Watery eyes

Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. His work has appeared in online literary magazines Cool Beans Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Muse-Pie Press’ Shot Glass Issue #41, the Rising Phoenix Review, The Amazine, University of Baltimore’s Welter Literary Journal, and JMWW, and will also appear in the forthcoming Moonstone Arts Center anthology Which Side Are You On?!, With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.

two honks and he is risen
in the living room from a couch more comfortable than you’d expect.

she cascades across the street in an ivory bathrobe
playing in the sunshine like a new year’s day float.

through the open front door on it comes :
the scent of morning glory on the breeze.

a row of drumsticks itching to be bbq’d
sunbathing in the window— thaw.

blinds cracked, do the dishes, vacuum the floor, brew the coffee;
skillet, eggs, sausage : home.

Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. His work has appeared in online literary magazines Cool Beans Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Muse-Pie Press’ Shot Glass Issue #41, the Rising Phoenix Review, The Amazine, University of Baltimore’s Welter Literary Journal, and JMWW, and will also appear in the forthcoming Moonstone Arts Center anthology Which Side Are You On?!, With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.

I put a little of myself
into everything I cook
Mom says, making bread
on the formica kitchen table

I watch her stretch and fold the dough
her hands push and roll the spongy mass
that reminds me of her belly
pasty and deflated by motherhood
she pinches off a small ball
and pops it into my mouth

I smoosh the slightly sour glob
between my tongue and the roof
of my mouth savour the yeasty treat
she pats my protruding stomach
and leaves a smudge of flour
soft as baby powder on my apron

when I realize particles of her skin
have been incorporated into the dough
each time she kneads it. I stop
mid-chew but can’t spit it out swallow
the gift and allow it to nourish me

is this why she has shrunk?
have we been gnawing away
at her all these years?
how many loaves before she disappears?

Angelle McDougall is neurodivergent and a graduate of The Writers’ Studio program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. She has poems published in Rattle Magazine and Wordplay at Work Magazine. Some of her other work can be found online at angellemcdougall.com.

and the woman who sold them wore a thick sweater
buttoned in the middle of 90 degree heat.
But we didn’t notice, reaching for the salt shaker
on the counter then opening our mouths wide to the boiled
and baked dough, once a gold field of grain
now enclosing cream cheese pinked by lox.
We sucked the dough before it stuck
to the roof of the mouth,
then ran back on streets wide enough
to nourish birches planted before foundations
were metered and bricks laid.
The heat always stayed, metal to touch. The earth welcomed us
squawking raw and sweet
from finches overhead.
Our cousins said to us, You have no accent
at these Jersey reunions with great aunts and uncles
who left Poland and the Ukraine. Like Tessie
who in her Queens apartment stayed up until 3 a.m. baking rugelach
and in an upstate cabin each summer served us kasha varnishkas
loaded with butter. I knew her sisters sold
their wedding rings to bring her over.
Yet for us the war had been replaced by Hogan’s Heroes,
the same way a remnant onion
on a sesame bagel called
backwards, the same way we didn’t consider
the bagel woman
and how her accent
betrayed everything she escaped.

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The Shore, Mom Egg Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Sky Island Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and Ekphrastic Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review and has featured in the Lily Poetry Salon.

At a time like this
smoke drifts across the road
a few bars of harmonica
flit through the gusts of conversation.

You are no longer alive.

A very young waiter
serves me, proudly, a slice of pie.

This is a small celebration
of our rediscovered love
of your face looking up
gaunt and old from the pillow.

You always liked your pie.

How handsome you grew as the moment neared!
– the moment when something in you decided
it was time to give up on breath.

Old and yet young, vulnerable
haggard – debonair –
at last your face held all of you:
we couldn’t look away.

The conversations eddy in here;
the lemon aftertaste of the pie grows sour –
the flavour of mortality.

You made and marred me;
you muddled along, as we all do
and today, lying cold
waiting for the fire
still you lead the way.

Kai Jensen was born in Philadelphia but moved with his family to New Zealand when he was five. He married an Australian, is now an Australian citizen, and lives and writes at Wallaga Lake, on the Far South Coast of New South Wales,with kangaroos in the garden. Kai’s poetry has appeared sporadically in Australasian literary journals including Landfall, Sport, PoetryNZ, Takahe, Southerly, Westerly and Overland, and also in Rattle.