Four Poems
by Damon Hubbs
Buckle
Where are the co-ops of Woodstock
and yogurt empires of New Berlin?
What became of the supermarket in California
where Walt Whitman poked among the meats in the refrigerator
and Garcia Lorca eyed the watermelons?
Where are our reservations at The Prairie Whale?
Where have you gone, Stanley Tucci?
Bologna? Milan? or Bar San Calisto?
Where is the girl who wrote “I Dream in Bisquick”
because I really like that poem
and would love to ask her out for waffles?
Where are the fresh strawberries and new potatoes of Sweden?
Is Ron Padgett still cooking you dinner tonight?
What became of the Whole Foods in Hawaii
where tourists kissed fresh mangos
and argued about modernity?
Where is my Mother’s recipe for blueberry buckle?
What became of Sal’s and Cassis Bakery and The Greenland Cafe?
Where is the Brick Oven Pizza of yesteryear?
Where is Joe and his perfect bologna sandwich?
What became of the cook, the thief, his wife & her lover?
Tell me, why am I a day late
and a buck short?
Haschich Fudge
I won’t write a memoir
or autofiction or a fictional memoir
that would be easy pudding
& I want to bring Haschich Fudge
to the Ladies’ Bridge Club &
go skinny dipping in the River Kwai
although I don’t play bridge
or own a copy
of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book,
I’m growing a third mind
& really getting into the permutation poems.
I want to be transparent:
Shallots are fussy.
I have a suitcase full of cheese & chocolate.
I don’t cook bananas eleven ways
or wrestle with pig kidneys.
I’m embarrassed to say
it’s not even noon
& I’ve fallen in love
with three waitresses
a busboy
two dishwashers
& a bartender
named Jane.
Tennis Chop
When you were luvlee in bed
& we were restructuring the universe
you read me The Futurist Cookbook
it said those who enjoy pasta suffer from incurable sadness
& this made me sad because tonight I cooked you
the most marvelous pasta dinner.
It was like driving a racecar to The Waffle House
because pop art is about liking things
parole in libertà & while there’s no cow
fashioned out of butter, my love, that must have been
somewhere else, there is a veal cutlet, anchovy
& banana arranged to resemble a tennis racquet.
There is a side of red silk & black velvet
& weight + perfume (carnations, perhaps——
Ima look pretty in my dress no matter what
you said, even if we’re destroying museums, libraries
& spaghetti. Even if our stato d’animo is heavy
with incurable sadness & two too large tables
or maybe we’ll just tuck ourselves into a bed
of black olives & fennel hearts, cured meats & crudités
& smoke cigarettes in the cockpit of a Tin Goose.
Heartache
Pattie is writing a poem about El Mordjene
and why it’s better than Nutella.
There’s a stanza about rations and shadow bans
and how it’s more expensive than cocaine.
Pattie likes hyperbole
which is also why she bakes.
Her crumbs are miracles.
Pattie tried her hand at an abecedarian
but only got
as far as:
A
Bok
Choy
Disaster
In Pattie’s poem about El Mordjene
there’s the smell of hot coffee
and the sun is the gold of fermented butter.
There’s a ferry going back and forth
and a hotel and a faded copy of Lunch Poems.
There’s a canto about falling in love
and two about heartache.
She thought about adding a fat purple fig.
The chicken is starting to turn.
She calls it the volta.
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