Tales of the Impertinent and Presumptuous

Taking a cue from a discussion on Dining@Large about bacteria, saliva and bottled water I found this poem, which features Pinot Noir and saliva in a tasteful fashion.  Did you ever notice that you can't taste your own saliva?  Yet there it is all the time.  Just like cable TV - you really only appreciate it when you don't have it.  

Pinot Noir makes Rainer Werner Fassbinder happy.

 

An Impertinent Vintage with a Presumptuous Aftertaste

Picture this … sings Frank
     in this …  52nd floor …   big view lounge 
                where conventioneers finger tap 
       Bud bottles to Sinatra.

Tactless Pinot Noir in a liberal goblet,
warm & red, sheeting over my tongue, leaving 
a quilt insinuating foreign saliva.

Peculiar to this wine tonight, never 
before with a Cabernet, Chianti, 
Merlot, or Beaujolais, this flash of a kiss
of immoderate familiarity and moisture.

It rouses a memory strong but attached
to no mouth or face I recall.   Struggling 
to place the taste of anyone’s saliva 

while bearded business drunks,
“I used to be Irish!”          repeat everything, “If he don’t, I will!”

       “I used to be Irish!”      twice      “If he don’t ...”
twice and       “You bet Bob!”                           “... I will!”

try to place it, but no reference point,
no saliva standard, can’t fix the taste
in my own            “You bet!”     mouth     “Bob!”    mouth.
                                                                  End up
guzzling Pinot Noir memory scanning
for a tiny overflow of saliva from 
under her tongue, she maybe had
to be home early for a watching father 
or husband or job, maybe could stay out all night.
                                                                       But I doubt it.

 

 

 

While we're on the subject of Pinot Noir, why not pull out the monologue from Sideways?  I think that he might be talking about more than just grapes.  

 So nervous beardy guy in pain, why are you so into Pinot Noir?

Uh, I don't know, I don't know. Um, it's a hard grape to grow.  As you know.  Right?  It's, uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early.  It's, you know, it's not a survivor like cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it's neglected.  No, pinot needs constant care and attention.  You know?  And, in fact, it can only grow in these really specific, little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really.  Only somebody who really takes the time to understand pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression.   Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet.

My Boy Smuckers

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. 
-- Soren Kierkegaard

Here is today's food poem - neither menacing nor disturbing.  I wonder if they named their kid Smuckers?

 

Sunday morning anticipatter

Holly up 
and paints 
some names 
on our almost-baby 
dip dipping a fingertip 
in the jar of strawberry 
preserves on the tray 
next to our bed.

Her belly mountain of us 
accommodates several 
and several are expunged – 
thinking while licking
I trace the rubrics 
with my tongue and 
kiss away her ripe ideas.

The Trolley of Meat

Another day, more food anxiety.  

The Trolley of Meat

back when everybody rode the streetcars
back when the butchers
worked here
but lived over there

there was the meat car
with men hanging onto straps  
  with bowling pin forearms

our dogs chased the streetcar
  and we let them

we never witnessed the goings-on
  in the sprawled buildings
  beyond the guards and gates

I think our dogs knew
  but didn’t care
  or didn’t want us to worry

Super Bonus Wednesday

Scylla

 

I like this one.  Just the right balance of menace and food and paranoia.

 

Torn between the Scylla Salad and Charybdis Pesto

  Fleeing orange acid
  riptides, razor clam surf
  punks, ankle grabbing sand hands,
  swept onto the Dunes of the Accountants.

  Number crunchers on steroids
  swinging rolling pins with
  hands as big as your fist
  sport t shirts that beckon
  Kiss Me I'm Symbionese.

  Chased, bludgeoned into a run down restaurant
  Pasta Agonistes  
  I stumble I circle the salad bar,
  I just can't take any more.
  Bones shattered, a bag of pretzel sticks,
  Humiliated Uncle I pronounce.

  In a Handi Wipe moment it's shopping mall new,
  bursting with college kid wait people
  reenacting my torment with souvenir
  rolling pins for the
  families of threes ordering dinner:
  "Does the Linguini Achilles come in a child's portion?"

 

© The Portland Review, Vol. 36, No. 2, April 1990

Bonus Wednesday

I'm avoiding doing something else, so I will continue with more food and disturbing poetry.

Maybe the writer shouldn't be sleeping on an ebi sushi.  I can't say that it would be my first choice for a pillow.

 

Heads

  4 AM and Paris is finally quiet, but
  for a low hum outside, harmonious
  and growing in volume.
   
  I swing open the windows
  to a buzzing serenade.
  From the fifth floor
  it's hard to tell, but I
  think it's a gathering
  of the shrimp and fish
  heads I left staring
  from my plate.
   
  They seem to want something.

Wednesday

Oops, it's already Wednesday.  Time for another terrifying poem about food.  This one will do.

Martinique Blood Sausage Spree

Steely electric guitar flitters
to the taped rhythm track,
the black man with the blue Strat,
off a Rive Gauche alley,
spewing happy 
singing.
 
The waiter slides around,
points a finger
above my ear, then
into his chest.
 
“I am egg gal. I am.”

French with a German accent, I think
he means the painting’s signature:
M. Hegel.

I nod and smile,
he nods to the guitar player
who nods to the cook as 2 tables 
nod a lot, dance out the door
and leave me alone in Cafe Martinique.
 
I order from the page marked
Wondrous Gifts of the Sea
in bad pointing French.
 
Red wine goes quickly with
the tangy squid stuffed
with different squid, bananas,
fiery yellow peppers, cinnamon.

The guitar player turns up the echo.  
Wine and squid drift away. 
 
Hegel brings more wine and a plate
of deep red sausages. Wondrous 
gift of the sea? I ask and all three
nod yes, to each other, to the music,
to the sausages.  

The painting looks down on me:
 green fatigued,
 a black soldier
 blue spume anchored,
 arms skyward
 clutches a bayonetted lobster
 wriggling on gunpoint 
 and ashen white goat slung
 around his neck

 M A R T I N I Q U E

 in black sparrows, contorted, 
 twisted wings into letters.
 
Heavy knife dull pulls
tears the skin
and a reddish brown
pushes out, oozing, intact.

In my mouth: hot spicy nutmeg pepper.
On the wall: lobster soldier leer smolders.
On my tongue: aroma soft rising round
  viscid roe salivary urging
  fermenting goat 
  blood glowing.
 
Over my shoulder, smiling
black and white, restaurant
staff bouncing to the
echoey blue guitar.

Tuesday

Pretzel Girl

I guess I will add a poem once a day or so that amuses or offends me.  Here is one.

It’s not sex, just too much entropy
 
The air is poisoned,
so you desire women with
messy unwashed hair.
A desire to wrestle
with their hair ribbons
and sunglasses, bracelets,
scarves, and necklaces.
To consume all this junk,
to lift women from the
streets of Montparnasse
like cheese fondue.
You hate yourself a little.
 
You hate yourself more as a Parisian
object of desire turns out to be a poli sci major
from Kutztown State, “that’s in Pee A!”
 
You no longer know what you desire.
You no longer want naked women.
 
You only want to make them naked.
To un-accessorize them, unravel them
and iron out the wrinkles of attitude.

Grackle Day poem

Lissa brought up Grackle Day and that made me think of a poem about grackles.  Now that I look at, I'm not sure that it's about grackles at all. It definitely isn't safe for the restaurant blog.   

            Grackle Sandwich To Go

North we went, me and Carolyn, who I snagged
from TGI Fridays near Cape Canaveral.  Skipping
DisneyWorld we settled for french fries & fucking,
forsaking Mickey & Minnie for fast food and self-made
obstacles – steering wheel & head, heels & windows,
friction & gravity – all easily overcome.

I thought a grackle sandwich was a joke but the more
Georgia we went & the more accustomed I became
to rental car vinyl the more real it became
until I felt a heavy flapping beside us in the dark
as we turned inland and went off the menu.

Cracklin’ on the plasticized mattress at the Peach Grove
Motor Lodge, Carolyn face down foot end of the bed
white bread crusts scattered to the 4 corners of the rug
& more I shook her hard. Dead, not really, wish I was she said,

black feathers on white sheets, a crunchy memory, a shame
on nature and two dead bottles of Jack – grackles loomed.
Suffocating in the doughy white, lively dying in a sandwich,
my head throbs as the night before jerks back, a zesty wing beat

makes the Wonderbread spongier more compressed and I hear
memory shards of Trim the crust Honey. I hear more than I want
& my tongue becomes self-conscious, roaming around

new sores & punctures & sticks, sticks stuck in gums
feather stubs. Up to vomit, Carolyn runs a greasy hand between
my legs & off we go. To the heart of America, where birds sit
on fences & people sit stuffed on sticks in fields of scare.