Writing Prompts: Food (#1)

Food is a great prompt.  We have a complicated relationship to it, it represents culture, there are 'rules' around food based on where you live -- ever try to put ketchup on a Chicago hotdog?  And in some cases, we've lost knowledge of where our food comes from.  That's why we'll address food a few different times at PoetryBones -- Here's #1.  

First Mentor Poem

July
BY CRISTIN O’KEEFE APTOWICZ
 
The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed greedily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it
just to watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melted
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.
 
Copyright © 2013 by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. “July” originally appeared in The Year of No Mistakes (Write Bloody Publishing, 2013). Source: https://poets.org/poem/july

Poem Prompt #1

How good was it?  Write a poem about feel-good food, about a special meal, about eating, about preparing or cooking. Compare the look (or taste or smell) of foods to other things.
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Second Mentor Poem

My dad & sardines
BY TOI DERRICOTTE
 
my dad's going to give me a self
back.
i've made an altar called
The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,
& asked him what i could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said i should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
i've said just about everything bad
i can think of &, since . . . well,
no, i change my
mind, i can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven (or trying
to get in), it wouldn't hurt
to be in touch. the first thing i want is to be able to
enjoy the little things again—for example, to stop peeling
down the list of things i
have to do &
enjoy this poem, enjoy how, last night, scouring
the cupboards, i found a
can of sardines that
must be five
years old &, since i was home after a long
trip &, since it was 1 a.m. & i hadn't eaten
dinner &, since there was no other
protein in the house,
i cranked it open & remembered that
my dad loved
sardines—right before bed—with
onions & mustard. i can't get into
my dad's old heart, but i remember that look
on his face when he would
load mustard on a saltine cracker, lay a little
fish on top, & tip it with a juicy slice
of onion. then he'd look up from his soiled
fingers with one eyebrow
raised, a rakish
grin that said--all
for me!—as if he was
getting away
with murder.

Source: https://pen.org/selected-poems-from-the-undertakers-daughter/

Poem Prompt #2

Write about food(s) you associate with a particular person(s), living or dead.
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Toi Derriotte answers questions about writing, explaining why she hates the question 'who is your favorite poet' and topics she thought she was done writing.

Derricotte’s family life was marked by death, abuse, pain and racism; coupled with her Roman Catholic schooling and light skin, Derricotte often felt alienated and guilty. In an interview with Contemporary Authors, Derricotte revealed that: “As a black woman, I have been consistently confused about my ‘sins,’ unsure of which faults were in me and which faults were the results of others’ projections.” She added that, “truthtelling in my art is also a way to separate my ‘self’ from what I have been taught to believe about my ‘self,’ the degrading stereotypes about black women.” Derricotte’s writings explore race and identity through autobiography as well as literary forebears, and her work is known for treating sexual topics with candor. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly characterized Derricotte as a writer who “blends personal history, invention and reportage.”
 
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/toi-derricotte
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More, Please!

​From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE
 
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward   
signs painted Peaches.
 
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
 
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   
the round jubilance of peach.
 
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
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Li-Young Lee reads his poem "From Blossoms"  from the Poetry Breaks series -- a series of videos filmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by creator Leita Luchetti. Poetry Breaks features short videos of internationally renowned poets reading their work, reading the work of other poets, and discussing their takes on poetry in a variety of locations. 

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Colossal Bean photographed this in the 100 North Clinton block, west loop Chicago