Salad forks scrape
across scalloped plates
from a window I watch
them serve the main course:
duck au confit
avec herbs de provence
satin dresses & designer suits
each face same choreography:
chew, dab, smile, laugh, chew
I eat a stale peanut granola bar
and turn back into the wind
naked limbs of winter
stretch towards me
while indoors they pop
Moët & Chandon
for one moment my eyes meet
another’s: gentle brown,
they might have been hers
but the mouth is rigid,
a life in training to live
in opulence without
ever understanding
its decadence
and by the time I glance back
she is lost on the ballroom floor

Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the author of a poetry collection (Clothesline, 2023) and four poetry chapbooks. Her latest poetry chapbook, Fairytales, was published by Bottle Cap Press. Her debut novel will be published by Type Eighteen Books (November 2023). 

funky aged ham
pale as a Christmas star
like skiing in Aspen
mashed potato gilding
off cornices
cranberry gems
collapse
dinner roll walls and greased gravy ponds
cannot hold back the trash
when they stand
on forked feet
of molded, mangy
mushy fat ham
centerpiece left to accidentally slow cook
(thanks Uncle Fred, we really didn’t need that)
abandoned, collapsing
now
the night breaks us
with it

French Toast and a Live DJ
too early to wake up
too late to sleep
too sober to get down
breakfast is meant
to be silent
near solemn
over my French toast
I grit furred teeth
as the café is wracked
by a DJ’s table-rattling
milk-curdling
egg-scrambling
beat box to hell, howling
garbage disposal, demon despoiling
my syrupy communion
lost grace on my tongue

Tain Leonard-Peck is a writer, actor, monologist, and model. He paints and composes music, and is a competitive sailor, skier, and fencer. He is the Poet Laureate for West Tisbury, Martha’s Vineyard. Among his awards, he won #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, the first place Poetry Fellowship to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and Honorable Mention for the Creators of Literary Justice Award, by IHRAF, the largest human rights art festival in the world. His work has been published in numerous literary journals. He is completing his first novel.

After A R MacDougall’s recipe in The Gourmets’ Almanac 1931
‘If you know any newly rich bootleggers or any racketeering parvenus who would care to
make a sensation at one of their costly dinner parties…’

Take an olive, marinaded in oil and
stuff it into the smallest bird you can –
a fig-pecker, or fat and fleshy ortolan.

Once the ortolan has been stuffed
place it in something bigger, say, a thrush;
the thrush, then is also trussed

then placed within a plump plover;
but make sure you give that a cover
of bacon, or something similar, so that over

and through it all the juices run
and mingle. Then get a fat young capon
Or pheasant (if pheasant, make sure it’s hung),

which then goes inside a goose, young and tender.
Cook it slow so that the fat will render
down, and after several hours send an

odour of plains, forests, marshes, poultry yards.
Then take each bird, unpick it, discard
the carcasses, one by one. This bit’s hard

because you want to eat them, enjoy the flavour,
the reward of all those hours waiting and labour.
But, now take the olive, pop it in your mouth –
              And savour.

Saleel Nurbhai grew up in the UK and Australia. He has published short stories and poetry which have been included in The Redbeck Anthology of British South Asian Poetry and in 20/30 Vision, and he has written and performed monologues and short stories for the radio. He’s also published theatre and music reviews, academic essays and articles, and is co-author of the monograph, George Eliot, Judaism and the Novels. He now teaches part-time for Lancaster University.

Instead of jewels, I gather gooseberries—
the taste of jade. Or mince the flesh of tomatillos
to moisten them with fresh lime, coarse salt,
and virgin oil. Note to self: Take notice.

At my birth, tickling my ear with her gorgeous finger,
she said I will never forget you. Cherries, grapes,
eggs, we were born from imagination.

A recipe holds the future. A bit of my mother’s
knuckle grated into the latkes we made together.
I bury the cleaver in the carving board
to forget that she had to die one day.

We laughed and sucked the mangoes
dry over the sink, the cabbage shrinking
in the dish as I cradle her face
between my hands.

Beneath the lavender in the window box
I find dead birds, such perfume in
loneliness, the holiness of that place
And so many mouths to feed—

Now the clinking of an ice-cold kitchen—
the room exhales its sheer white curtains
Walls, the color of custard peel away.
Paint, potato, skin. One lives a full life

to tell a simple story.
I slit the onion, and watch it weep.

Rozanne Gold, an award-winning chef, food writer, journalist, end-of-life doula, and a Jungian psychoanalyst in training, cares deeply about what it means to nourish.  Poet Annie Finch called her “a geographer of women’s souls.” A fixture on New York City’s food scene since 1978 when she was first chef to Mayor Ed Koch, Rozanne is a four-time winner of the James Beard Award and the author of thirteen acclaimed cookbooks. She has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, among others, and was a finalist of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Prize (judge: Victoria Chang). She has an MFA from the New School where she taught “The Language of Food” and is a Board Member of Brooklyn Poets. Her chapbook Mother Sauce was recently published by Dancing Girl Press. (www.rozannegold.com)

With both my pregnancies I vomited
nearly every day, nauseated by cuisine
I grew to love as an adult: grilled swordfish,
seafood paella, tiramisu, crepes. 

Instead, I craved meals from my childhood:
steaming bowls of giblets and rice,
kreplach, knishes and kasha,
mugs of borscht with sour cream,
the Ashkenazi foods of my mother’s youth.
Mom was happy to oblige.

I desired ice cream sundaes topped with hot fudge
and whipped cream (from Friendly’s, Mom’s favorite),
macaroni shells sprinkled with salt, melted margarine
gathered in the crook of the shell.
Bacon, lettuce and tomato club sandwiches
like the ones Mom and I shared in a booth at Brigham’s
after shopping for new school clothes.
Pastina and farina, two dishes she made for me
when I was a fussy toddler.

I lusted after tuna or Italian sub sandwiches—
the ones my Dad brought home to give Mom
a night off from cooking. I dreamt of Chinese food:
egg fu young, egg rolls, bread and butter
on the side, cups of hot tea stirred
with heaping spoonfuls of sugar; my family’s 
Sunday afternoon ritual, the TV blaring
news or sports from the other room.
My husband reluctantly brought them all to me.

In the days following Mom’s death I open
my refrigerator. It overflows with leftover ramen,
chicken cacciatore, fancy cheeses and olives.
Each night my husband lovingly cooks
elaborate fare: fresh snapper, tofu, pesto pizza.
But only the simplest chicken soup with lokshen
comes close to quenching my ache.

A lifelong New Englander, Laurie Rosen’s poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review; Peregrine; Oddball Magazine; Zig Zag Lit Mag; Gyroscope Review; Wilderness House Literary Review and elsewhere. 

The only telepathy we knew of was sex. 
You had my face. & my heart. 

& subsuming our base product. Cut the fruit 
but bring only one knife, this time

Derivations or constraints, witness?

( you said you’d be a marlin )
( they said I was a   m i r a g e )

For example, in Icelandic, [k^h] is 
the first sound of kátur meaning ‘cheerful’ 
while [k] is the first sound of gátur meaning ‘riddles’

Pressure or pleasure, mate? 

start into me like plastic cutlery 

Agon
Agon
Anon anon anon

(But I’m out of the bathtub now!)

are you sick? 

no! I’m just getting better!

I lap it like watershed literacy ravishing the magic of knowing, now 
being, participating, seen, participated in — yet I cannot read 
myself, mirror hung face to wall 

(the birds who don’t stop chirping)

I tried but instead it surprised me & I drowned

Hailing from the Pacific Northwest Kristin K. Withers now hazards the heart of Dallas. Her first collection of autoscopic language poetry explores the tortuous tethers of identity, self-conception, desire, & the emotive capacity in reflection thereof. A graduate of TCU with her BA in Philosophy, she is currently domesticating herself & enjoys wizarding chili crisp for friends & chosen family. 

Rhubarb

To check on your rhubarb
I tuck my sharp knife
double-wrapped in plastic bags
under the bungee of my paddle board
and head out to your dock.
Summer is soup right now—
hot, viscous. I find the rhubarb—
great stalks as thick as my wrist
long as my thighs. I pull out my knife
to make the clean cuts.
I know why I cannot restrain myself—
I’ve had your rhubarb on my mind
ever since I last summer—
your gift—so large, so plentiful.
Don’t think I’m crazy talking to a dead man.
Don’t think I’m stealing what would go to waste.
I’m hoping I honor your life,
to taste the sour in the pie.

Applesauce

How crisp the apples that resist the knife.
How sweet the pale yellow flesh to bite.
How the apple, smaller than my fist
pretends at symmetry when I slice.
One seed split by my cut peers
out like a new tooth from the core.
I steady the apple half and dice
think of how each piece each wedge
of flesh fits together like a puzzle
and when I pour water in to simmer
sprinkle cinnamon from a jar
without taking time to measure
I think how imprecise this process
is—the making of the sauce—
no matter the number of apples
no matter how much water—
while I wait for the cook down.
For how long? Who cares?
For this moment I cover
then simmer
then mill.

Filmmaker and photographer Carla Schwartz’s poems have been widely published, including in
The Practicing Poet (Diane Lockward, Ed) and in her collections “Signs of Marriage” and
“Intimacy with the Wind.” Her CB99videos youtube channel has 2,400,000+ views. Find her
at carlapoet.com, wakewiththesun.blogspot.com, or on Twitter, or Instagram @cb99videos.
Recent publications appear in The Ear, Channel, The Poet’s Touchstone, Ibbetson Street,
Paterson Literary Review, The MacGuffin, and Leon.

Does everyone fall in love
with their ex–brother-in-law?
I did for a moment.

He came to my house to eat
this man-cook who knows
the fishmonger, the fisherman
(never a woman in his world)

buys the tuna, slaps it on the grill
maybe fires up a few potatoes.
Asparagus or greens and there’s dinner —
the best I ever had.

Oh, what would I make
this tormenting god of the grill?
I opened a cookbook from France
a country he would never see
and followed directions.

Peppers, heaps of bloody red ones,
scorched until their skins popped,
could be peeled off, their painful
tender, raw flesh exposed
silky and tender
wet, vulnerable.
Soft and precious.

Into the processor
steel blades whirled, sliced
spun them with more olive oil
than anyone but the French
would dare use.

Oh, the delight, better than a kiss
on my own raw, red tender lips,
his sigh when he scooped up
the last pool of it.

“My, that’s good.”

I would give anything just to sit down to dinner
at a restaurant tonight
my friend and I are texting each other from our apartments
blocks away
I miss oysters too
glasses of champagne
even a table for one
on a Tuesday night, deviled eggs
each one a gift
passed from dozens of hands to mine
the farmer upstate
who surely misses a bottle of wine
now, sitting down for dinner
and the truck driver dreaming about pulled pork
from a place he knows to stop at
off I-87, south into the city
where a thousand line cooks dream
about after work shift drinks
steady paychecks
the bread they used to make
and the bartender, twirling an empty coup glass
in her kitchen missing that girl
who used to come sit at the bar alone
who ordered anything to drink
but always deviled eggs.

Keri Smith grew up in Florida then saw the world playing in punk bands. She has her MFA in Poetry from the New School, and her first book, Dragging Anchor, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 2018. She works as a bartender in Brooklyn and can often be found at Rockaway Beach with her chihuahua. 

For far too long I’ve listened in silence
to those espousing Kalamata supremacy,
(which, admittedly, I wholeheartedly concede),
or to others vaunting the virtues of Castelvetrano,
(God help those misguided dupes); I’ve patiently endured
insufferable disquisitions on the buttery flavor
of Cerignola, the tartness of Picholine,
the meaty richness of Gordal, most beloved
as a tapa beside slivered jamon and a glass of sherry.
With unbridled lust have I gazed at jet-black Nyon,
plump and wrinkly, dry-cured then aged in brine,
and I hereby confess that where my eye wandered,
alas, my faithless fingers soon followed.
Granted, I’ve nibbled my share of Nicoise tapenade
and reveled with abandon in its herbal fragrance graced
with faint notes of licorice; its petite counterpart
across the Alps, the Liguria, cannot withstand
comparison (very sorry, but my decision is final).
My palate has also thrilled at the tart, citrussy taste
of Gaeta, whose tender flesh enlivens the tongue;
I’ve swooned whilst savoring the sour bittterness
of Alfonso, supple after maceration in red wine.
Naturally, I’ve had my way with many a Manzanilla,
almondy ovals pitted then stuffed with pimiento
or else cracked and dressed with fresh garlic.
Full disclosure: I whored through handfuls of the rare
Beldi, sumptuous as a tagine garnish, and like a glutton
gorged myself on more Amfissa samples from the hills
by Delphi than the local oracles surely ever did.
And yet, for all my shameless promiscuity, I refuse
to avert my view from the grassy Mission variety,
oft overlooked and neglected by lesser connoisseurs,
but not by me, not this time, so once and for all let me
set the record straight, for in truth, I must insist,
black olives matter.

Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 300+ publications in 32 countries. www.brandonmarlon.com