Just a day overripe
Early Girls their given name
each tender bottom etched with a cross
a flagellation performed
with a tomato knife.
Washed and waiting
to be blanched and iced
and crushed by hand,
the flesh fragrant of warm rain and earth and mineral.
Hot juices singe fingers,
acids sting kitchen cuts,
like a honeybee
trapped between a flip-flop and a foot.
Pulpy seeds spew and spray and splatter
an old linen housedress
pockmarked with the blood and guts
of previous projects,
sacrificed at my alter and relegated to the deep freeze.
A true fruit,
the apple of my eye
sealed tight with a single basil leaf,
a hopeful dash of verdancy
to awaken
clay pots in wintertime.
Corona beans and pancetta and onion and smoked peppers
and old wine
buried deep in dying ash
reclaimed anxiously at dawn
from an oven still warm and smoky.
Barefoot in the gray morning chill,
recalling languid days of summer gardens
and pleasure myself in the sunshine.
Heritage Culinary Artifacts