Category: Poetry

The zucchini is the shmoo of the vegetable world.
Shapeless and non-descript,
it reproduces abundantly, seemingly overnight.
Yesterday’s small orange blossom
is today’s twenty-pound fruit.
 
Zucchinis can be cooked by any method known to man.
Fried zucchini, steamed zucchini, roasted zucchini,
boiled zucchini, grilled zucchini, broasted zucchini.
Zucchini bread, zucchini butter, zucchini jam.
I’m sure that someone somewhere makes green zucchini and ham.

Need some filler in almost any recipe?
Add a cup of puréed zucchini.  No one will ever notice!
And if they do, I’m sure they’ll love you that much better.
After all, who can ever get enough zucchini?
Just ask your neighbors and they’ll tell you.
Better yet, don’t ask.
Just leave the bag on their doorstep and run away!

Marne Wilson lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia.  Her poems have appeared in such places as Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and Cold Mountain Review.  She is the author of a chapbook, The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line, 2015).

At half-past seven it is time to take
our seats. Dinner is ready, and good food
should never go to waste. We try to make
light conversation to improve my mood
but find the effort awkward. You consume
the salmon, squash, and baked potato much
more quickly than I do. Throughout the room
long shadows dance in firelight as I clutch
a paper napkin, soon committed to
the trash along with remnants of our meal.
Tonight we fail to bicker over who
does not clean up. False strife has no appeal.
“The fish was really good,” you kindly note.
I still can feel a bone within my throat.

Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her poetry has been published around the world as well as posted online. Her first collection, Unloosed, and her second, Tides & Currents, are both available from Kelsay Books.

knowing the fickleness of toddlers
and that the food might sit untouched
hoping to hear an elusive, “Thank you.”
 
I mixed, sprinkled, sowed hope
with the seasonings
but the dish cooled untouched
inedible as the seconds passed
 
it reminded me again
when we get what we ask for
once it’s become fact and
placed fragrant at the table
it’s rarely wanted

Jennifer Courtney (jl courtney) is the aging mom of three young children and the fiction editor for Postcard Poems & Prose. She has been published at Page & Spine, Black Heart Magazine, Feathertale, and others. Some people like her cooking.

It is any summer afternoon of my teenage years.
Once his soap operas are over,
my father goes outside to work alone.
I get to stay inside in the coolness
while my mother takes her nap.
I think I’m supposed to be washing the dishes,
but I never do.
Instead, I gather my ingredients
to make illicit baked goods.

There’s a reason I spend my precious solitude this way.
When my mother bakes, she never follows the recipes.
Sometimes she gets confused,
beginning on one page of the cookbook
and then switching in the middle of the project to another.
But even when she keeps her attention on the task at hand,
she has to make her own modifications.
Sugar, salt, and butter have little place in her kitchen;
she says those things are bad for us and better left untouched.
Her bread is like a doorstop and her cookies are like rocks,
but she never learns the lesson.

One year I try to force her hand
by doing a science project on food chemistry.
I order books from the state library
that tell me salt is necessary to help bread rise
and sugar is needed to give a cake structure.
Then I do the experiments to prove this myself.

My controls seem nice enough
to please any judge at the county fair,
while my test batches, each missing one crucial ingredient,
reflect my mother’s typical results.
Townspeople praise me on the creativity of my project
and ask where I got this idea.

I smile vacantly, as my mother has taught me.
She knows that what matters
is the way things look on the surface
and not how they feel inside.

Marne Wilson lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Her poems have appeared in such places as Poetry East, Atlanta Review, and Cold Mountain Review. She is the author of a chapbook, The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line, 2015).