NaPoWriMo 18

(Finally! I'm back on track!)



Baking a Cake


My aunt makes a well in the flour
with the measuring cup. She takes

the first of three eggs, cracks it
into the cup, then adds to the mix.

This is how you make a cake, one egg
at a time cracked carefully, separately,

as not to taint the whole or its parts.
In my 39 years, I have never cracked a bad egg,

never found blood in the yolk. But my aunt,
who seems to have been given a basket of them

goes on, without explanation or pause,
adds oil, cocoa power, mixes the ingredients

into a brown paste and shoves everything
into the hot mouth of the oven.

We let things rise the way women do
to make something near perfect,

as the egg becomes part of the whole
as the cake’s edges pull away from the pan.

Comments

murat11 said…
This one is gorgeous and also packs a whallop: something about the structural "care" of the couplets that mirrors the care of preparation, and yet these wonderfully oddly almost ominous (though that is not the word) wordings: "I have never cracked a bad egg," "never found blood," "the hot mouth of the oven," and that gorgeous line "We let things rise the way women do."

Gotta run to church, but I'll be back.

Peace.
Anonymous said…
this is a wonderful poem...good on you for NaPoWriMo-ing this month!!!!

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