five kitchen poems

between the carrots

and the kohlrabi

I paint

my secret life blood-red

with the juice of beets       

scribbling

poems to eat 

on the grocery list

I let the toast

go up in smoke

the thwack

of a cherry pitter

missing half the pits

my desire in life

to do one thing well

new-laid eggs

bobbing in cool water . . .

gingerly

I rub the dross

from my poems

all morning

reading tanka—

my compost bin

heaped with pineapple,

strawberry, mango, rose

Atlas Poetica 13, Fall 2012