Cookbook Unrest

I hear the cookbooks in the kitchen--
garrulous relics from pre-digital times.

They flop around on the floor. They
gossip about how and what I cook.

"Seriously," one of them says, "if he's
going to improvise all the time,

why consult us, why insult us?"
God damn their greasy pages.

The chefs who authored them: bah!
No one should be famous for cooking.

A cat has heard the books now.
He becomes a lynx and bounds

off into the kitchen.  It's quiet
in their all of a sudden.  That's right:

close yourselves, you recipe barns.
Digest your dissatisfaction.



hans ostrom 2017

Garbage Disposal

("Insinkerator")


It is a rabid wolverine trapped
in a mine tunnel under the sink.
It is the misbegotten id of the kitchen.
As it masticates food we wouldn't
touch, it snarls, snorts, and chokes.
It is the lawn-mower's mad cousin
holed up in the gothic under-counter
cabinet with terrible chemicals.
As I stare into the sink's hole,
afraid, I hear the monster lacerating shadows.
I will feed it a fork again one day
because I must.


Hans Ostrom, copyright 2012