A LESSON IN COOKING

 

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Make your kitchen paint
your food out for you –
colorblock the wall into
dark eastern spices,
brown skins,
the white of apples
and potatoes beside them.
 

Make room for the in-betweens –
patterned bread, 
tricolor salad
and yogurt-dipped moss.

Thrust open your kitchen window
with your delicate hands, 

caramelize American harmony 
and let the air waft it
to other homes. 

A medium-high heat is
sometimes necessary to
absorb omens. The water
will run the snow off mushrooms
and roast them golden-brown.
Arabica beans will be creamed
in organic milk. Roses and meat
will dissolve in the flurried boil of the same bowl.

When the cooker whistles,
measure its soft plaintive smoke. 

It is saying something.
Do not be restless with the stove,
let it simmer. Let it sit.

Take up a class in chemistry to see
how compounds are born out of
singular flavors, learn language
to read cookbooks from other places.

There is a time for 
briny lumps and delicately cut 
melon seeds, for crème caramel
and an intimate goddess
of strained yellow dawn –
these are all unstrung delicious pleasures,
all extraordinary dust.

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Anannya Uberoi (she/her) is a full-time software engineer and part-time tea connoisseur based in Madrid. She is poetry editor at The Bookends Review, the winner of the 6th Singapore Poetry Contest and a Best of Net nominee. Her work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, The Bangalore Review, The Loch Raven Review, and Tipton Poetry Journal. www.anannyauberoi.com

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