Althea Romeo Mark Food-Themed Poems, Part II
The mouth which eats does not talk
Food-Nourishment for the mind, soul, body, the family, the future
I have
been told by a fellow writer that a lot of poems I have written feature food as
a subject, reference food, or have a food theme. I did not believe it
until I looked through my work to discover this for myself. It turns out that
the writer’s observation is correct.
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 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.
Before I share part II, here are some common food proverbs used in the English language and in African countries. You might have used and have already heard many of the English proverbs.
A proverb is a brief popular saying (such as "Too many cooks spoil the
broth") that gives advice about how people should live or that expresses a belief that is generally thought to be true.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away!
A hungry man is an angry man!
Eat to live but do not live to eat!
Don't put all your eggs in one basket!
It's no use crying over spilled milk!
One man's meat is another man's poison!
Too many cooks spoil the broth!
We never miss water until the well runs dry!
Do not bite off more than you can chew!
Half a loaf is better than none!
A watched pot never boils!
Jump from the frying pan into the fire.
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
If you lead a horse to water, you can’t make it
drink.
Life is but a bowl of cherries.
And from Africa, some proverbs you may or might
not have heard.
The sugarcane is sweetest at its joint-good and
sweet things may appear difficult to achieve, but in the end, it is worth it.
The best way to eat an elephant in your path,
is to cut him up into pieces-the best way to solve a problem is to take it bit
by bit, one problem at a time.
Hunger is felt by a slave and hunger is felt by
a king.
You can tell a ripe corn by its look.
One cannot both feast and become rich.
Milk and honey have different colors but they
share the same house peacefully.
The mouth
which eats does not talk.
Those whose palm kernels were cracked for them
by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
Dogs do not actually prefer bones to meat; it
is just that nobody gives them meat.
When a woman is hungry, she says, “roast
something for the children that they may eat.”
Dine with a stranger but save your love for
your family.
Source: https://answersafrica.com/african-proverbs-meanings.html
(dedicated to my mother, Daisy
Valborg Marsh Romeo)
I
My
mother never used one,
she
learned to cook
the
way her mother taught her.
Recipes,
like folktales, and
the
secrets of garden bush,
carrying
cures for colds,
high
blood pressure, diabetes,
sleeplessness,
nightmares,
and
measures against restless spirits,
were
passed from mouth to mouth.
Mother
shared her knowledge,
the only way she knew.
Summoned
to the kitchen,
I
stood, watched, listened to instructions,
“Come,
see how I tun’ de fungi.”
It
seemed like hard work,
all
that turning with a wooden stick.
Nobody should have to work so hard
to make a meal.
I
began to sweat before the process even started.
“Bring
de water to a boil. Add salt.
Chop
the okras, drop dem in de pot.
cook
‘til tender. Sprinkle in de cornmeal. Slowly!”
I
stood around the kerosene stove,
shifting
from foot to foot.
“See
how I tun’ de fungi?”
Heat
alternated with breeze
sneaking through the kitchen door.
“Stir
briskly to prevent lumping.”
Mama’s
plump, tanned hand-churned,
arms
swiftly dispensed of sweat
trickling
down her nose from forehead,
threatening
to become an ingredient.
It
seemed forever, the churning,
and
watching cornmeal’s
sputtering
plop, plop,
spitting
and spurting
like
nature’s hot water geyser.
Once,
my eyes strayed out the window
at
Mr. Peters straddling his donkey downhill.
A
stinging pinch to my ear
brought
me back to the lesson on hand.
“See how I tun’ de fungi.”
See how I add de butter? Stir!
Look ‘pon you.
How you goin’ get a husband?
II
I
received a cookbook the day I married.
A
wedding present from a friend,
it
became my kitchen buddy.
Recipes
now committed to memory,
cookbooks
sit on a shelf with
old
English and American classics
I
promise to re-read one day.
My
daughters watched my cooking in passing,
made
quick observations, did some tasting.
On
their bookshelves, a book on Caribbean cooking
serves
as a bookend to MLA Guide to Writing
and
Modern German Literature.
Recipes
today are just a mouse-click away.
I
have not forgotten to share secrets
of
bushes in back gardens,
measures
against restless spirits
and
things that must remain unwritten.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, The Nakedness of New, 2018
Poverty
De sun come idlin’
Over de mountain,
Removin’ de shadow
From de tree limbs,
Revealin’ de pickinagers*
Playin’ in de mud
An’ eatin’ dirt
Like tis dukahna an’ salt fish,
An’ de all wishin’
Dat de dirt stains
Wus grease stains.
© Althea Romeo Mark, Palaver Anthology, Downtown Poets, New York,1978
*pickinagers-small black children
Mango Fetish
“When mango season comes,
the housewife puts
down her pot.”
Hunched over on
boulders under a tree,
we wash round, oblong
mangoes and
pile them in small
heaps on burlap bags.
We shake green mangoes
off trees,
knock them down with
stones and sticks,
slice, lick the sour fruit,
and clap tongues
against the roof of
our mouths to carry the taste down.
We pluck them, yellow,
orange, red and
from low branches,
pick them up
from the ground where
they fell while
wrangling with the
wind.
Yellow juice fill our
mouths where
we press, squeeze,
tear, bite flesh
to make holes in soft
skins. We wear
sappy golden
mustaches and beards.
Flaxen strands
protrude from teeth.
We lick our lips, wipe
mouths
only to indulge
ourselves again.
Like Sukanah ravenous for blood,
we suck them dry.
Named long ago by
texture and fiber, we devour
mango Julie, mango Thomas, mango Beth,
mango Marian, mango
belly-full.
We cannot resist the
gorging of yellow pulp.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2009
*West Indian saying – “When mango season comes,
the housewife puts down her pot.
*Sukanah, in Caribbean folklore, is a creature, related to the vampire, which
travels in human form during the day and shed its skin at night in order to fly
into houses and suck the blood of its victims.
In order to kill the sukanah, you have to salt its skin so it is unable
to fit into it again.
Womanhood and Poverty
She could not get
enough to eat,
yet, she kept on
having babies
and, they kept on
dying before the age of two
from malaria,
pneumonia diarrhea
all sorts of amoebas,
and after ten babies,
she had none,
but she kept on
having babies.
© Althea Romeo Mark, anthology Two Faces: Two
Phases 1984,
Manna
Rain falls.
Fat transparent pearls
dent dusty earth.
Rusty roofs of market stalls
shelter drenched stragglers
caught off guard.
A flurrying brown mass
of ant flies
hijack the night.
Hypnotized
by glaring street lights
they swarm to the glow.
Wings sizzle.
They drop like fallen angels
to the ground.
In the first morning light
brown fingers scrape damp earth
rake wingless ants into buckets.
Laughter, loud chatter ring the African village.
Blackened stone hearths are cleared of
yesterday’s ashes.
Dry twigs thrown in, set alight.
Cardboard fans powered by hands
birth large fires.
Wooden spoons stir sooty iron pans.
Ants roast and pop into
a salted, peppered crunchy feast
from heaven.
© Althea Romeo Mark, If Only the Dust Would Settle Anthology 2009
Breakfast
At the
quarterly breakfast for women,
the
faithful greet each other at the door,
embrace
and kiss acquaintances,
spot new
faces, shake hands.
Guests
come from other cities,
countries
as near as Germany,
as far as
Egypt, Peru and Japan.
They
are here to listen to selected speakers
talk
about jagged roads traveled
to
overcome adversity—
a woman
from Turkey,
descendant
of Genghis Khan,
is
judged a foreigner
in her
own land
by her
Asian appearance;
and
another, a “native foreigner,”
a Swiss
from another Canton*
who
could not speak nor understand
the
unfamiliar dialect and language
in her
new, neighboring home.
Each
shares the struggle to find her place.
Each had
survived feelings of alienation
to lead
others beyond
the
“outsider” wilderness.
Each
word at breakfast, a morsel,
the
mortar rebuilding the broken,
each
word, vitamin, giving courage,
each
sentence strengthening backbones,
each
experience giving iron to the will.
©
Althea Romeo-Mark 06.04.18
*Native
foreigner- someone from a different state/canton where a different language
is spoken. In Switzerland, German, French, Italian, and Romansh are spoken
in different parts of the country.
*Canton- state
"Breakfast"
poem published in DoveTales, Empathy in Art: Embracing the Other, An
International Journal of the Arts, published by Writing for Peace, USA,
McNaughton & Gunn
Noonday Gathering
They have been seated at their
table
in the church’s annex
since a quarter to twelve.
Peter and Frau Fischer
Hansruedi and Luigi,
Herr and Frau Yilmaz.
Rosemarie’s seat is empty,
and Max has not come.
“Hope he hasn’t
crossed the great divide,”
Hansruedi says. “Rosemarie
abandoned us three days ago.”
Blond, dreadlocked Peter
sits at the table’s end
and stares at black letters
jumping about on an
upside-down newspaper.
Near him, Frau Fisher,
gray hair scooped back
in a French roll,
is nearly seventy.
Dressed in purple,
she is bejeweled
in silver elephants.
Frau Fisher placed
next to the widower, Hansruedi,
follows his knobby fingers
massaging gray stubble.
She frowns at his interpretation
of news he devours in a tabloid
he swears he never buys.
Today he spills his thoughts
on “The Diplomat’s Fall.”
Delicious gossip before
dessert.
Luigi, opposite Peter,
never speaks, but
twiddles thumbs and twitches.
His brain, having a tantrum,
signals some demand.
A great love of wine
has spawned a natural rouge
on Vreni Yilmaz’s cheeks.
Yusuf Yilmaz eats a meatless
lunch
as they are serving pork today.
He flirts with Vreni,
shuts out the local dialect
he barely understands.
The gathered savor the meal
their five francs buys,
chatter in the comfort of
familiarity,
escape the smell of dingy
bedsits,
and the pain of life’s
pummeling.
Peter spoons and slurps
the last of his egg soup,
sneaks sliced bread,
sugar cubes and napkins
into big pockets.
Frau Fischer bids farewell
to her dispersing
family of friends.
She will stay behind
to clean and fill the need
to be needed.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, The Nakedness of New Anthology 2018
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo Mark is an educator and an internationally published writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, England, and Switzerland since 1991.
A dual American and Swiss citizen, she
writes short stories and personal essays in addition to poetry. and has
been published. in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua, and Barbuda, The
Bahamas, Barbados, USA, England, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Colombia, India, U.K.,
Kenya, Liberia, Romania, and Switzerland. Her last poetry collection, The
Nakedness of New, was published in 2018. She has participated
in International Poetry Festivals in Romania, Kenya, and Colombia.
Womanhood and poverty resonated long with me, and I thought of a young woman, 25, who is now pregnant with her sixth child. But out of choice. Then I bumped into an old acquaintance and we got talking about family. She told me she has 17, soon 18, grandchildren from her 5 children. The oldest 30, the youngest soon to be born, which will bring the total to 18. My only thought was, 'Very costly at Christmas:-)
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