Five Tastes Marry on Mott Street
Salty. It’s raining, and hours too late.
But neither of us can sleep. So a red door
opens, and up the few dozen beeline
steps you are cooking for me
as if the day was just half-done.
Sour. Once I’m in, shaking off the wet
like a dog out of a peat fen, nothing
is what it appears. Kitchen steam
might be autumn dragon’s exhale
pushing the room to twice its size.
Mantis babies alighting on the table
turn out to be scallion wedges flying
from your blade. I, too, am made into
something else I do not recognize,
but accept as part of the spell.
Spicy. You are not conjuring a feast
for two, but sacrament for
all our line as well. A whole fish
seared on the gas fire, a whole
capon turned side over side
every ten minutes in water
not quite boiling. Shiny bowls
pile high with burdock, lotus,
taro, peony and glistening shoots
unwound in every direction.
Bitter. I know you know this food
is medicine, you say. But I did not
know till tonight how Five Tastes marry
to cool the red-hot mind.
Sweet. Greet me in the long ruddy hall/
my fingers slip like rain into yours/
what else need pass between friends
in this cramped palace,
this vast remembrance
in the coiling tides of Chinatown?
Wiser one, I still hear you say
we are safe as pearls cast onto the moon,
dressed in Five Tastes glory for no
perfection but our own.
rabbitandrose.com, literary blog curated by Kim Shuck,
San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita, issue 3, 2017
Sections
Five Tastes Marry on Mott Street
Salty. It’s raining, and hours too late.
But neither of us can sleep. So a red door
opens, and up the few dozen beeline
steps you are cooking for me
as if the day was just half-done.
Sour. Once I’m in, shaking off the wet
like a dog out of a peat fen, nothing
is what it appears. Kitchen steam
might be autumn dragon’s exhale
pushing the room to twice its size.
Mantis babies alighting on the table
turn out to be scallion wedges flying
from your blade. I, too, am made into
something else I do not recognize,
but accept as part of the spell.
Spicy. You are not conjuring a feast
for two, but sacrament for
all our line as well. A whole fish
seared on the gas fire, a whole
capon turned side over side
every ten minutes in water
not quite boiling. Shiny bowls
pile high with burdock, lotus,
taro, peony and glistening shoots
unwound in every direction.
Bitter. I know you know this food
is medicine, you say. But I did not
know till tonight how Five Tastes marry
to cool the red-hot mind.
Sweet. Greet me in the long ruddy hall/
my fingers slip like rain into yours/
what else need pass between friends
in this cramped palace,
this vast remembrance
in the coiling tides of Chinatown?
Wiser one, I still hear you say
we are safe as pearls cast onto the moon,
dressed in Five Tastes glory for no
perfection but our own.
rabbitandrose.com, literary blog curated by Kim Shuck,
San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita, issue 3, 2017
Sections