Jane Shore

Ode To Utensils
after Charlie Smith

Opening the drawer, I like the old-fashioned egg beater best,
green painted handle so worn and flaked
the blanched wood underneath shows through.
I like to see the evidence of another hand
beneath my own. I like how the twin rotors spin
in tandem, whipping up ghost breaths across my face.
I like the old apple corer and potato masher,
the ones you find at flea markets,
and the hinged egg slicer that, when opened,
is like the miniature lyre I used to pluck
playing in the corner of my mother's kitchen,
its perfect slices of cooked egg like cross sections
of boiled sun. I like the church key's one tooth
biting tin lids so that cans sigh with pleasure.
Strainers, funnels, slotted spoons, spatulas, ladles, tea balls
excite me. At night in bed, I swoon over catalogues of cookery,
and imagine my life as it will never be.
Utensils that sift flour, rice potatoes, plane cheese,
knives that are specialists, with blades
that pare and bone, fillet and carve-
gizmos that zest lemons, curl butter, strip an ear of corn
of its kernels, unravel its strands of silk-
cherry pitter, pepper mill, mortar and pestle, hand-cranked
grinder gnashing down chunks of raw meat and shitting
them out in one long continuous sentence-
peeler undressing the modest carrot, meat thermometer
stuck in the turkey's breast, barely grazing the wishbone-
O utensils, I like your tangs and tines and tongs and prongs.
Unlike me, you work without complaint.
When I close your drawer, do you pray in the dark
to your ancestors, those ancient scoops
made of horn and shell, socket and knuckle,
while I recline, cleaning my teeth with thorns?
-Jane Shore