This recording was made at the fall concert of the Sounding Joy choir, directed by Barbara Hall, on May 22, 2008.
1. Cooking
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2. A Man in the Kitchen
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3. When Life Boils Down
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4. Which is Worse?
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5. Does a Woman
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Text:
excerpts from
A SINGLE WOMAN EXPERIENCES FAILURE
IN THE KITCHEN (TEN SONGS)
1
Cooking is like swimming in a lake.
Dangers lurk submerged.
I may chance to hit upon
barbed wire or
treestumps in my cupboards.
Memories, tricks of longing
glint beneath the mind’s quirky surface.
Stirring brings them up.
As does the smell of plain bread baking,
the sound of lettuce quickly torn,
the sight of eggs and lemons in a wooden bowl.
2
A man in the kitchen
is a chemist
or a sorcerer
or a chef.
A woman in the kitchen
is in her proper place. And yet,
left to her own devices, a housewife
reveals herself a hussy
or a witch,
steeping herbs, brewing trouble,
leaving the floor unwashed.
If you think we have done with all that,
go out to the kitchen. Upend
a white cup and let wet tea-leaves
drop onto a white saucer.
Read. They speak
the mother tongue.
10
When life boils down
to bare bones
refugees
with bags of rice
must follow
the one who salvaged a
kettle.
4
I can’t tell which is worse –
guiltily scraping mistakes
into the pail and staring down
those yellow faces with almond eyes upturned
in reproach
or
guiltily consuming
every crumb of evidence
at a single sitting,
swallowing what went wrong
like medicine, hiding it,
tidy as a cat.
8
Does a woman cook to please herself
or her mother? And when
she wipes the counter clean
before she chops up onions, has she
finished cleaning or started dinner?
Deep in the cavernous blood
promptings linger. I clash
enameled pans with wire whisks,
lacking brass finger cymbals
or flutes of bone.