(no subject)

[fahye]

invention challenge

it's hard not to dream in recipes
when the only text that unblurs in my sleep,
just long enough to be read,
is a list of instructions to be followed.
my daydreams are beginning to suffer likewise
the culinary form as their spine:

they scoliose, and in their bending they require
three cups of coffee drunk only for the taste,
a stirring narrative with a citrus twist,
a pinch to wake myself up
and two handfuls of your hands, full
to bursting with ripe promises and love.

there are recipes catering to every palate:
those who cannot tolerate responsibility, those
whose stomachs churn at the lightest taste
of debt. acid reflux on the lips warns
against wanting more than I can realise
with the ingredients that make me up, and

rows of black words take control of my wants.
I will learn to yearn as directed,
to whisk up a foam from an empty space,
to take a mortar and pestle to my life
and moleculise the loneliness --
crush and blend it with the rest.

I awaken with no flour in my hair, no burns
on my fingers, but at night the kitchen is
alive with mistakes. things curdle. begin again
and use less salt this time. the book
falls open at a page stained with repetition
and molasses, and the recipe says:

in a moderate heat bake the gingerbread shapes
of a family and ice them with harsh city noise;
for their eyes use the memory of sky.
by day I grind down my own bones
and by night I will forever be here
whipping up dream futures spiced with

partings, age, raspberries and time
growing fast and as wild as can be
in a box painted with clouds and set
out in the city air, sixteenth floor, to grow
high above loud lymph traffic lighting its own way
back to the sentinel nodes.