correspondence: norwegian folk cooking

Dear Impresario, the television
told me to live better, so I try.
but I don’t know how, because
the television didn’t say.

I read that to make something tender,                                                                                                                                                    it should be poached. So, I am preparing
a pot for my love. I am rubbing
it with duck-fat and demi-glace.

I have not found a recipe
for commitment, or how to
read moods in the bite of
an apple too sour to eat.
Or how to make the quinces
hanging from the trees, turn sweet.

I tried a recipe for a cake
made from scripture.
I substituted the broken pieces
of your myth, for manna, and
milk instead of wine, but it fell
when I hoped it would rise.

What I’ve lost is the will
to be thin, and so forth.
Six pennies and my favorite hat.
I know that hitchhikers are
the things that make us whole;
the eggs in my batter.

I heard that in Norway,
you can catch a whale
of sadness, if you cut
a potato in half, rub it
with salt and hold it to
your forehead for the
shortest hour. I tried this once,
and its true, but I got only
a narwhals worth, when
I was hoping for blue.

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