Mattie's Pillow

The Moon as Food

Tonight, the moon was first the color of orange sherbet, then crème brulee. It occurs to me that I often think of the moon in terms of food. What things that are not food do you think of in metaphors of food? Write about an object, an experience, a feeling and let food–such as strawberries, eggs, romaine lettuce–creep to the poem.

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Here are two responses from Glow, who loves food, dogs, kitties:

my fiddle teacher brings her dogs to her studio
one of them sighs when my bow screeches
the lemon sounds pucker her patience
she sighs and leaves the room
I have progressed over the weeks
now my bowing is less like sour lemons,
more like olives, heavy ripe, still tangy, often bitter
I have tried to sweeten my sounds
tried to avoid making the dog sigh
desperate for canine approval, or at least not canine rejection
I cooked up a new idea:
treats hidden among my music.
both dogs now lay unsquirming at my feet
seemingly eating up the lemon sounds
understanding that each squirt of screech
is rewarded by a stealthy tasty bit

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many orange cats
have woven and spun through my life
all but one of them male
many had food names
pumpkin for his roundness
persimmon, discovered in persimmon season
among ripe fly buzzing fruits scattered around him
sherbert, or bert for short, creamsickle color
orangeaid, a neighbor cat who stayed with us a year
then disappeared, only to reappear three years later
with one less ear
toklas, the subject of Stein’s lifting belly
sunny, a pool of orange sunshine and sunny disposition,
a melted puddle of frozen orange juice
hesitation named for the hestitation waltz,
the way he approached his food
that had to be placed under the bed
he was so freaked out by the LSD
previous owners had given him
And the one female orange kitty
no food name,
but named for joy and elation like food:
Jubilee.

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My try at this one:

Waiting for rivers’
crack and slide, ice crashing
along banks, grinding
small rocks smaller,
the flat slabs
cutting the spring air
like slow sails, picking
up speed as dark water
seeps up, trickles, gushes.

Now, the ice, flat,
as birthday cake
a child has poked
a finger into here and there;
a few people wander the surface
or lean over holes, dangling
line, peering through slush
for the ripple of fins,
the dark running current.

The sun.
The bright gleam.

The waiting willows.
Memory of green things.

Tags: food, moon, poetry, writing, writing prompt

This entry was posted on April 9, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under Poetry Challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.