I. Introduction to Vegetables {Ah, but beneath the skin is tender, cream-colored flesh with an exquisite nutty taste.} Berries are packets of blood on a string and broccoli florets are flower buds. Raised deprived of sunlight: the yellow moons in their shells, green stars floating on milk. Brightness seeps from steam. Top and tail the bean, pulling a curl of shrivel, an orchestra of celery. Sometimes there will be a soft white heart at the bottom: cook’s treat. Once there was just the crimson beet, but now— II. How to proceed {With the tip of a paring knife, cut an X in the bottom of each sprout to help them cook quickly and evenly.} I am born a darkling watcher, tasting of scrape. You respond to air and soil as warmly as babyfood so it’s easy to find the knifepoint. Open to waterchange. Marble of torso, the articulation of fingers, light buttons, on skin’s theoretical sky. In the driveway a shadow under a leaf becomes a bird which becomes a shadow. There are secret corners where mounds of leaves produce methane, capillaries carve space into tiny shapes— then we look up and see bottomland, broad, sycamore-fringed. A streaking dog with a flag of white at the end of its tail. The moon sails up and stops over treeline for the third night in a row. Now you snap when I fold you in half. III. Restorative qualities {The soft black fungus rarely discovered on an ear of market corn is anathema to growers, but its sweet earthy flavor and creamy texture make it a great culinary treat.} At dinnertime a society of birds is splayed through trees. They spell a sentence about the force that causes chromosomes to line up inside a cell. Sometimes what appears to be one round shallot will be two half rounds. Prepare a bath of leaping oil. A globe of meat rubbed with cloves, gravel and clarity of regret. Even crows try their accused. Given that a coyote kills a calf by nipping a piece of its tail every day for seven days: write a recipe for what the calf should eat on the morning of the seventh day. Simply pull them apart. As we separate days by sleeping. IV. The Conoisseur {As their skins dry to translucence, the hollow centers at their necks close tight, sealing them against spoilage.} You have a sense of topography’s logic: in the movie, the lost anti-heroes keep crossing the creek— just follow it down! you say. You know the rate of speed that keeps water out of your shoes and why the ground pockets in the rain. Copperheads took over the farmhouse, eventually mashed to a paste by the volcano of a flailing heartbeat. Something wild in my chest like a pilot light or the green that waits underground all winter, through December’s shadowless daylight. You understand this too. And the face that knows god, the equator of a tomato, the hollow sound of bread thumped for doneness. And those few tablespoons a month, their reason, their aftertaste.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 02:45:10 +0000
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