Poem by Beth Ann Fennelly
Photo by Paul Gandy
April 24, 2023
Because to me, a dinner table’s like a bed —
without love, it’s all appetite and stains. Let’s buy
takeout for your cousin, or order pizza — his toppings —
but I can’t lift a spatula to serve him what I am.
Instead, invite our favorite misfits over: I’ll feed
shaggy Otis who, after filet mignon, raised his plate
and sipped merlot sauce with such pleasure
my ego pardoned his manners. Or I’ll call Mimi,
the chubby librarian, who paused over tiramisu —
“I haven’t felt so satisfied since . . . ” then cried
into its curls of chocolate. Or Randolph might stop by,
who once, celebrating his breakup with the vegan,
so packed the purse seine of his wiry body with steak
he unbuttoned his jeans and spent the evening
couched, “waiting for the swelling to go down.”
Or maybe I’ll just cook for us. I’ll crush pine nuts
unhinged from the cones’ prickly shingles.
I’ll whittle the parmesan, and if I grate a knuckle
it’s just more of me in my cooking. I’ll disrobe
garlic cloves of rosy sheaths, thresh the basil
till moist, and liberate the oil. Then I’ll dance
that green joy through the fettuccine, a tumbling,
leggy dish we’ll imitate, after dessert.
If my embrace detects the five pounds you win
each year, you will merely seem a generous
portion. And if you bring my hand to your lips
and smell the garlic that lingers, that scents
the sweat you lick from the hollows of my clavicles,
you’re tasting the reason that I can’t cook
for your cousin — my saucy, my strongly seasoned love.
Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021, teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she is a four-time teaching award winner. She’s received grants from the N.E.A., the United States Artists, the Academy of American Poets, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize and three times been included in The Best American Poetry Series. Fennelly has published three poetry books: Open House, Tender Hooks, and Unmentionables, and a book of nonfiction, Great With Child. A novel she co-authored with her husband, Tom Franklin, called The Tilted World, was published by HarperCollins. Her sixth book, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, was named an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book, a Goodreaders Favorite for 2017, and the winner of the Housatonic Book Prize. Fennelly and Franklin live in Oxford with their three children.