Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

10/16 is World Food Day. 

 “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
― Hippocrates 

Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

What is your Recipe for a Healthy Life?  
What foods do you eat (or wish you were eating)??  

Go to the links above to read about World Food Day.  Or simply answer the question(s) literally or conceptually ~ with luscious details, of course ~ in a brand new poem.  I hope you find the quotes, poems and illustrations inspiring!

"Eat in company, and cook at home.  It's good for your health."

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Sliced fruit

Cutting greens

By Lucille Clifton

curling them around

i hold their bodies in obscene embrace

thinking of everything but kinship.

collards and kale

strain against each strange other

away from my kissmaking hand and

the iron bedpot.

the pot is black,

the cutting board is black,

my hand,

and just for a minute

the greens roll black under the knife,

and the kitchen twists dark on its spine

and I taste in my natural appetite

the bond of live things everywhere.

Kale (left) and Collard Greens (right)

I Ask My Grandmother If We Can Make Lahmajoun (excerpt)

By Gregory Djanikian

. . . .   

we sprinkle the flour on the kitchen table   

and it is snowing on Ararat   

we sprinkle the flour and the memory   

of winter is in our eyes   

we roll the dough out   

into small circles   

pale moons over   

every empty village   

Kevork is standing on a chair   

and singing   

O my Armenian girl

my spirit longs to be nearer

Nevrig is warming the oven   

and a dry desert breeze   

is skimming over the rooftops   

toward the sea   

we are spreading the lahma

on the ajoun with our fingers   

whispering into it the histories   

of those who have none 
. . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)
 

Lahmajoun,Turkish and Armenian

Eating Fried Chicken

By Linh Dinh
 

I hate to admit this, brother, but there are times

When I’m eating fried chicken

When I think about nothing else but eating fried chicken,

When I utterly forget about my family, honor and country,

The various blood debts you owe me,

My past humiliations and my future crimes—

Everything, in short, but the crispy skin on my fried chicken.

But I’m not altogether evil, there are also times

When I will refuse to lick or swallow anything

That’s not generally available to mankind.

(Which is, when you think about it, absolutely nothing at all.)

And no doubt that’s why apples can cause riots,

And meat brings humiliation,

And each gasp of air

Will fill one’s lungs with gun powder and smoke.

Fried Chicken

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Forgiveness.)