Althea Romeo Mark’s Food-themed poems:
Nourishment for the mind, soul, body, the family, the
future
It made me reflect on the importance of meals that bring us together as friends and family. Meals are the center of joy, celebrations: birth, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and of death (the joining of ancestors after the trials of an earthly life), too.
During these gatherings, we can free our souls, get things off our chests. During this coming together as friends or family, we share what we have, whether it is a little or a lot. At these gatherings, we can unburden our minds, set each other straight if one of us has gone astray.
Sometimes poems feature food or show the absence of it during times of natural or man-made catastrophe. Some poems show what we do to survive, to nourish body and mind in order to ensure our future.
Part I: Five Poems
Alternate
Universes
I.
Dinner
She rises early in the morning
to meditate before the driver
takes her to PiYo*
The maid rouses the children,
bathes and serves them breakfast.
A teacher gives French lessons via Skype
while the nanny stands by
to clarify IT complications.
In the afternoon,
an on-demand-chef
shows up at the front door
to transform emailed menus
into sumptuous, vegetarian meals.
There must be choices.
God forbid there are complaints.
There is a zucchini-and-leek pie,
a cauliflower and cheese casserole,
hamburger-shaped tofu-turkey
and a side-dish of vegetarian samosas.
Leftovers are dumped
or smuggled away
by the maid whose soul wails
at the sight of wasted food.
II. Dinner
The mother rises at daybreak
to chop wood in the thicket
to tote to her yard.
Branches are bundled on her head.
Hand-hauled twigs
map zig-zag tracks
in the deep dust.
By early afternoon,
the washing is hung,
sun-dried, and folded.
Children, home from the school-hut,
peel yams and eddoes*
drizzle them with lime juice.
Mother balls cornmeal
and flour dumplings in her hands.
The caught country chicken*,
scalded and plucked,
boils in a Maggi-cube soup.
Provisions* and
dumplings
are dropped into the pot,
plop, plop, plop.
Nobody complains
that the chicken claws are scrawny.
Nobody complains
about the toughness of thighs.
PiYo is a total-body fitness system designed to whip you into shape from head to toe.
It combines the practices of Pilates and yoga to help you build strength, lose
weight, increase flexibility and have a great time doing it. PiYo was
created by Chalene Johnson, the founder of the Turbo Kick system.
*Country
chicken—free-range chicken
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2017 Revista Triplov: Journal of Arts, Religion and Science
Just A Few More, Papa God
During shopping spree,
a rattan tray of roast corns
snares the man’s attention.
The seller does not speak.
A wide straw hat shelters her from the sun.
Sweat slinks down her brown face.
Her eyes beg him to buy one or two.
.
She’s been there since morning
sitting on her hand-hewn stool
husking corn, peeling cassava,
fanning coal to roast them,
to parch peanuts.
She offers boiled alternatives
to suit the taste of customers.
Their eye to eye conversation,
reveals a meager living.
He understands there
are many mouths to feed.
He, with his big shopping bags,
treats his entourage her snacks,
then rushes off without looking back.
She looks up to sky,
scans her competitors who line the streets,
gazes at her dwindling coal sack,
and prays “Just a few more, Papa God,
just a few more.”
© Althea Romeo-Mark 06.08.2017 Revista
Triplov: Journal of Arts, Religion, and Science
If Only The Dust Would Settle
(Liberian Civil War 1989 -2003:
For Liberians in the Diaspora)
This spring day sings of summer.
A short-sleeved throng of exiles
has gathered to soak up the sun,
and create an air of home.
African spices bait our noses.
Chicken and ribs sizzle on a grill.
A table’s laid with beer and punch,
Jollof rice and cassava salad.
Chatter, laughter camouflage pain
drudged up by their tales.
They speak of pounding down
Embassy gates, clambering to be let in
and of beatings and death threats
by drugged soldiers chasing the ghost
of their conscience.
They stumbled over the dead
fleeing to safety. Marched long
across borders, battling the searing sun
and battering rain, skirted dogs
devouring the flesh of swollen corpses.
Some ate grass, watched family and
friends succumb to hunger, malaria, cholera.
Despite the horrors, that drove them
from their land, some crave home
where they were masters, would
surrender beautiful houses for huts
in their villages.
Unsettled, they cling to scraps of hope,
another coup, the president's demise
at the hand of man or God.
They exist in private purgatories,
stigmatized, forced to yield to
the bidding of others, swallow pride
in the face of racism, survive on Prozac,
attend the funerals of suicide victims.
Adrift in their haven, some have died from loss
and loneliness in a land where
no one understands the way their hearts speak,
where no one understands their duty to dig up
the bones of their dead when it is time to return.
Ancestors await the arrival of their children
scattered from American to China,
confined in camps in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana.
If only the dust would settle,
they’d see the end of the cycle
of war and death.
If only the dust would settle.
© Althea Romeo Mark, If Only the Dust Would Settle Anthology 2009
We
Do Not Cry For Meat
Yesterday
we ate rice and palm oil.
Today
we are eating rice and palm oil.
Tomorrow
we will eat rice and palm oil.
We
eye our bloated bellies
in
the shadow of the kitchen fire,
and
though not old enough
pretend
we are with child,
pretend
our fallen teeth will grow,
pretend
our limbs are fat
can
bear our large tummies
but
we wobble when we walk
and
do not cry for meat
for
the dry land has snatched
our
cattle and left us only bones.
©
29.03.10 Althea Mark-Romeo
From
dirtcakes (www.dirtcakes.org)
Feasting on The Pulse of Lake Victoria, Kenya
(With poets and students from the Kistrech Poetry Festival, Kenya)
The
bus we arrive in at the shore is a giant python unloading its eggs.
Eager to embrace the new scene we push out of its metal bowels, make a quick exit.
Before
us Lake Victoria spreads grey-blue against an endless horizon.
Some
quickly drawn to a long boat at the pier soon become its passengers
and
disappear in Victoria’s vastness.
We
walk around the shore, capture scenes we may never see again,
capture
the life-rhythm of the Luo on a continent we might not visit again.
Impatient
storks totter on long spindly legs and wait for women
scaling
and gutting fish to toss unwanted entrails and gills.
Other
storks, full of catch, perch like Christmas tree stars
atop
tall trees towering above Mama Brian
Hotel
where
poets and friends yearn to feast on
tilapia.
This
is Lou country and we must partake of this fish-eating tradition.
We
can tell President Obama we have gorged on the food of his ancestors.
At
a standpipe, everyone soaps and washes their hands.
There
are no knives and forks to hinder the joy of eating.
Gathered
around a long table, we sit in plastic chairs
and
dig into fried and boiled fish.
Chunky
slices of ugali sit like mountains on
plates.
We
break off pieces, dip in fish sauce, feel
ugali glide over our tongues.
We
wait for the lake to return our comrades, relax into an easy mood.
Friendship
and memories are cemented
The
giant python sleeps by the roadside
white
against clay-brown earth.
©
Althea Romeo-Mark 2014
*Talapia-popular fish of the Lake
Victoria region
*ugali – cooked maize, white corn meal
No comments:
Post a Comment