The prettier the garden, the dirtier the hands of the gardener. — B.E. Barnes, Put in Work. Tend Yourself. Brambles are a tempting, but dangerous business. I am, if not anything else, particularly proficient at avoiding the place where the thumb might tack. An adapted state of survival, I might say, and also—it wasn’t always this way. The clumps of dark fruit, the color of bliss, or bruises, sit like gleaming jewels in their forbidden cage. The passage of time is evidently marked on the ink, and all of it up for offer—take only what you can hold. I take the lot. Blackberries are good that way ..read more

Two recipes woven together on theme—the same motive, if looked at closely. Mouth is the jury, mind is the judge, I write with a hand that commits constant execution. Taste becomes a sentence, and often goes questioned without a mark. In that light, every delicious thing takes on a tone of supplication—earnest, and pleading. I can confess later, but later it will be gone. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The self-same moment I could pra ..read more

Love came to me and said: What do you want of me? Save me I said, Save me. Love knelt down beside me and love said: If you knew the price of coming to you, you would ask nothing but would give. - Henry Dumas, Thought I have a second manuscript that’s due in four months. I’ve held it for three years, but really, I’ve been writing it for the last twenty. I often get asked about the crux. Sweet still yes, that’s the salve, but then again, when has this ever been about hunger? And yet. It is possible to return to the scene of love, or crime. For being a writer is to commit the whole of it to word ..read more

“You can put your strength down. I’m sitting here with you at your kitchen table. You don’t need to say anything.” - Eden Robinson, from Writing Prompts for the Broken-hearted. The earthiness of pumpkin works well in sweet applications. I like to enliven rather than temper it; with savory-driven spices, darkened sugars, and warm undertones that augment the domesticated vegetable. I’m going to ask you to roast a whole pumpkin down, then purée the flesh to a silky-smooth form of itself, instead of relying on the canned kind for this recipe. It makes the taste richer, stronger, and more pure. It ..read more

“I love October when the veil between worlds is thinnest. I love how at any moment I could forgive someone from the past.” - Alex Dimitrov, from Love. This is an uncomplicated thing. Some, call it a snack cake, others, picnic, but the climatic point is that it must hold well for travel or departure, and be straightforward enough that it comes together within a short period of time - but without sacrificing on taste. I make mine with roasted walnuts, tahini and banana, as well as a wealth of spices like ras el hanout, that omit a dusted-warmth that fades out like a sunset. For the cake 70 g ..read more

“He was thinking of her, of her oddity and composure. Wondering what she was doing on this long hot evening at the end of her wild-rose lane. Did she still have callers, was she still busy solving the problems of people's lives? Or did she go out and sit on the swing, and creak back and forth, with no company but the rising moon?” - Alice Munro, from “Powers,” Runaway: Stories. I will always love things I no longer desire to look at. Time, they say, heals it. But I don’t think so, I rather think time exposes it. It itches and scratches and peels the surface back. I see myself as the proud own ..read more

There are few things now that make me feel sacred. I won’t go on to list them but we know what they are. Honey, my connection to honey is one of the strongest senses that I have. It’s source. For the taste of my heritage is honey, also, buckwheat, sour cream, and hard liquor. We suffered for it all, our women, and we still do. This is a grandmother’s cake. It is also one that is completely technique-driven. Untraditional, by my own standards, but I took all the components that I loved from my childhood and put them into this. There is limited overt sugar in the cake, so the reliance on sweetn ..read more

THE WATER ENRICHES MY BODY, AND THE BREEZE BRUSHING ACROSS MY CHEEK IS REFRESHING. THE SUN WARMS ME, AND THE EARTH GENTLY EMBRACES MY BODY. I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE THIS. WHAT IS IT THAT I SHOULD PROTECT? – Commes des Garcons, Poem Pants (2002), Junya Watanbe I can chart the trauma of my body like a sailor charts the sea. Here, there’s a freckle and that means an entrance and to the right of it - a rip, and that has to be navigated carefully. That inky word and the discoloration that surrounds it, he wrote that. And down, south, to the soft part, well that’s the end and we don’t go there we don ..read more

“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” – Toni Morrison, from Jazz. I talk so much of roses that I also must spit the thorns. “But darling,” she said, “even your sonnets are thorned.” My palate, too. The hue of this rose smothered gelée, ruby-red and blooded, like the jaded heart on a one-dimensional playing card. ‘Queen of Hearts! That’s my title, it’s slicked on my tongue – address me as such. At some point, I had to create a system to remember all the men in my writings because there were too many of them. I became afraid that I’d forget wh ..read more

“Your body that includes everything you have done, you have had done to you and goes beyond it   This is not what I want But I want this also.” / Margaret Atwood, from Circe / Mud Poems in You are Happy. The art of loss isn’t hard to master. I’m rather fluent in it, you could call it my fourth language. Or, first. I can wrap my mother tongue around all the licks and curls in the hierarchies of pain, and sometimes, I get lost, slovenly, even, and confuse it with pleasure. And then I taste all kinds of truths and torments that the body knows but the mouth won’t speak of – can’t. The same g ..read more