Poetic Pizza

We kneaded the dough together,
your small hands and mine, fingers
probing for elusive elasticity.

You picked basil from the pot
on the windowsill, rubbing the leaves,
breathing in each pungent puff.

We cried onions, tasted tangy tomato
and  snacked hungrily on chewy cheese
as we chopped and sliced.

At the pizza restaurant in the Tuscan hills
on the eve of your wedding day,
the aroma melted thirty years away.

Kim M. Russell, 2016

kim-and-ellen-aged-five

My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Weekend Mini Challenge: Cooking up a storm

This weekend I’m hosting the Weekend Mini Challenge and my prompt has been inspired by the poetry of Moniza Alvi, a contemporary poet who was born in Lahore, Pakistan and came to England when she was a few months old.

Alvi’ writes about place and identity, duality, difference, displacement, borders and edges, as well as possibility, worldliness and making connections. The poem I chose for inspiration is ‘Indian Cooking’:

The bottom of the pan was a palette –
paprika, cayenne, dhania
haldi, heaped like powder-paints..

Melted ghee made lakes, golden rivers.
The keema frying, my mother waited
for the fat to bubble to the surface.

Friends brought silver-leaf.
I dropped it on khir –
special rice pudding for parties.

I tasted the landscape, customs
of my father’s country –
its fever on biting a chilli.

Moniza Alvi

We are writing poems in the same format, four tercets, about cooking: it can be someone else doing the cooking, you cooking alone or together with a loved one; it can be sweet or sour, spicy or bland, a special or an everyday meal. All I ask is that it appeals to the senses and is related to your life or culture in some way.

23 thoughts on “Poetic Pizza”

  1. This scene brings out the sharing that goes into a meal, the relationship between the people who prepare it and the food itself.
    We cried onions.. Love that line.

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  3. “We cried onions”… I so love this phrase, Kim, and the entire poem. I smiled from first to last line. I saw the speaker and subject share a moment so precious, intimate and full of love… and I felt like I was part of it.

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  6. A beautiful bridge of aromas for these memories Kim and ‘we cried onions’ is something my husband and I share so often when preparing a meal together. I really enjoyed the Moniza Alvi poem too, thank you for sharing ☺

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  7. It’s a nice Mom and Daughter poem, Kim, for me. Clever to pick a 30 year old picture to match your lines. True? We really do like the Tuscan hills, especially after staying in Bettolle (33 miles east-southeast of Siena) for a week and then a couple of other shorter visits. The people are very friendly and down homey, the country is beautiful.
    ..

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    1. Thanks, Jim. The wedding wasn’t far from Siena and we went there the day before. I love Italy. It was a good job I had spent some tiem scanning old photos onto my laptop for another reason because I can’t find the original now! That one was taken in Dublin.

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  8. Thanks for a lovely prompt and introducing me to Moniza Alvi,
    Luvved your poem especially the way time and distance melded in the last verse

    “At the pizza restaurant in the Tuscan hills
    on the eve of your wedding day,
    the aroma melted thirty years away.”

    much love…

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  9. What a lovely poem! Even a non-cook like me used to enjoy ‘helping’ my Mum in the kitchen, and having my son help me in his childhood. (He did grow up to be an excellent cook!)

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