Archive
Eating and Other Disorders
after Raymond Queneau
The novice cook seeks Julia’s expertise
for blanching to perfection haricots.
Mushy beans cannot but some displease.
Some gourmands love to eat raw cookie dough.
The infant sucks her own extremity,
the doting parents think it’s all for show.
The babe—as if to say Je vous en prie—
she coos and savors yet another toe.
A rabbit in its hutch adores a pellet,
a hungry man craves steak straight from a skillet.
The bored resort to nibbling canned sardines.
We’ve guzzled noodles Taranto to Bankok.
That soupcon of something earthy in the stock!
Quel aphrodisiaque? Quelles herbes fines?
Author’s note: Based on a sonnet derived from Cent Mille Milliards de Poemes, as presented in their original and in translation by Beverly Charles Rowe. For a concise explanation of Raymond Queneau’s sonnet grid project, go to the home page of Rowe’s website. (The website works in Windows and is best accessed through Firefox, although even this is somewhat problematic.) Using an earlier version of this website, I arranged lines from Queneau’s Sonnet 9, then rewrote each line using my own words and rhymes (as if Queneau’s poem were a palimpsest).
Lucia Galloway (website) has published two poetry collections, Venus and Other Losses (Plain View, 2010) and Playing Outside (Finishing Line, 2005). She reads, writes, and sorts her laundry at home in suburban Los Angeles, where she also co-hosts Poetry in Claremont, Fourth Sundays, a reading series. Find her most recent poems at The Dirty Napkin, The Innisfree Poetry Journal and The Comstock Review.
Suburban Vespers
When flagstones’ stored heat
on the soles of your feet seems
enough, when rounding
the corner of the house
to see your cats restless in the Indian Summer
night disappearing in the glow
of the street lamp makes
you think of baked bread,
at these moments you know that no
sycamore’s leaves will fail to call
to you in their drift from the tree,
no sprinkler head forget its chant,
no lime neglect its ripening,
nor fountain-rippled, garden pond lose
ardor for the frogs and minnows
harbored in its waters. The sundial
is shadowed, useless. Night things
are pulsing with their vows. Even
the coyote crossing
the greenbelt by the swimming pool—
its long, loping gait.
Lucia Galloway (website) has published two poetry collections, Venus and Other Losses (Plain View, 2010) and Playing Outside (Finishing Line, 2005). She reads, writes, and sorts her laundry at home in suburban Los Angeles, where she also co-hosts Poetry in Claremont, Fourth Sundays, a reading series. Find her most recent poems at The Dirty Napkin, The Innisfree Poetry Journal and The Comstock Review.
qarrtsiluni 