​POETRY -
    With the Theme of Making or Breaking Bread 

"So many gifts from the world of women:
​       food for memory."
​
                                     Photo by Weebly.com                                    

The Joy and Pain of Cooking
by Kathy Gilbert

​Looking for a recipe in
Rombauer’s battered cookbook
covers loose, bindings broken
spotted and stained by splashes
of my sloppy but enthusiastic
                cooking--
is that why I hate to open it? No.
All the women in my life are in its eaves
And I can’t close it until I revisit them all.

Aunt Tuttle first, her Hunt’s Salad Dressing
taped to the front inside cover.
Aunt Eily’s filet of ocean perch in sour cream
“Fin and Haddie” she’d smile.
Aunt Lil’s Hungarian goulash with paprika.

ESEA co-workers Ms. William’s gumbo,
Mildred’s Louisiana Cayenne Meatballs,
and Sophie Lee’s teriyaki sauce,

Now long gone from breast cancer, my
best friend Jane’s pleczanka, mandel
bread and pizza dough.

Sister-in-law Jill’s Hunan chicken honed
during their year in Beijing. From Muni,
Soule’s garlic dip scribbled on a Woods’
paddle for run 64 on the 18 Sloat bus line.

Coming out of my days in Ithaca as a student,
The Tompkins-Seneca—Tioga homemaker’s
yeast bread class notes from Bonnie, and
Susan’s onion zemmel on an orange card
displaying her careful penmanship.

A recipe for dill pickles from lecture series
notes on the neoclassical economies of 1933.
Millie’s carrot cake on the back of an
envelope from a letter (postage 9 cents)
mailed October 5, 1973 about Agnew’s resignation.
​
My mother’s recipes for fruitcake and two kinds
of potato salad: German and Serbian.
So many gifts from the world of women:
​                   food for memory.

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​​Kathy Gilbert received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2013 after a career in public transport. She received the Mark Linenthal Poetry Award in 2012 from SFSU and won the San Francisco Browning Society Gita Specker Award three times for her dramatic monologues. She was commissioned to write a play for the 2015 San Francisco Olympians Festival. Her one act Delphin and the Children of Amphitrite was performed at the Exit Theater. She also tutors third graders, studies tai chi, practices yoga and swims. Her new book Aprils Three: Poems and Photographs is now available locally at Bird & Beckett, West Portal Books, Green Apple on Clement and on Amazon. 

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