Kimchi
A poem about Kimchi or Kim-chi, the Korean style sauerkraut or fermented cabbage In fiery hues of crimson and gold, A symphony of flavors unfolds, Kimchi, the fiery heart of the east, A pungent masterpiece that never ceased. O! Fermented wonder, spicy and bold, A dance of sensations, a tale yet untold, From humble […]
A Poem about Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut In a humble pot, a fermenting delight, Lies sauerkraut, a flavor so bold and bright. Cabbage transformed, in a magical dance, Bathed in tangy brine, a culinary romance. Taste the symphony of tartness and crunch, As each bite ignites senses with a zesty punch. A humble cabbage, transformed into grace, Sauerkraut, a cultural masterpiece. […]
Cabbage
In verdant fields, a humble head does grow, A tightly bound, leafy globe of green, Its form unassuming, yet we come to know That in its essence, magic can be seen. A cabbage stout, its layers hold firm and tight, A symbol of resilience, strength untold, Its presence on our tables brings delight, A […]
Belly Good by Marge Piercy
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs but I’ve never seen wheat in a pile. Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek as a seal hauled out in the winter sun. I can see you as a great goose egg or a single juicy and fully ripe […]
Knoxville Tennessee by Nikki Giovanni
Knoxville Tennessee by Nikki Giovanni I always like summer Best you can eat fresh corn From daddy’s garden And okra And greens And cabbage And lots of Barbeque And buttermilk And homemade ice-cream At the church picnic And listen to Gospel music Outside At the church Homecoming And go to the mountains with Your grandmother […]
After Rain by P. K. Page
The snails have made a garden of green lace: broderie anglaise from the cabbages, chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils- I see already that I lift the blind upon a woman’s wardrobe of the mind. Such female whimsy floats about me like a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh, while feet in gumboots pace the […]
Butterflies by Rudyard Kipling
Eyes aloft, over dangerous places, The children follow the butterflies, And, in the sweat of their upturned faces, Slash with a net at the empty skies. So it goes they fall amid brambles, And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, Till, after a thousand scratches and scrambles, They wipe their brows and the hunting stops. […]
What Hidden Sweetness Is There by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
217 What hidden sweetness there is in this emptiness of the belly! Man is surely like a lute, no more and no less; For if, for instance, the belly of the lute becomes full, no lament high or low will arise from that full lute. If your brain and belly are on fire through fasting, […]
The Secret Garden by Rita Dove
I was ill, lying on my bed of old papers, when you came with white rabbits in your arms; and the doves scattered upwards, flying to mothers, and the snails sighed under their baggage of stone . . . Now your tongue grows like celery between us: Because of our love-cries, cabbage darkens in its […]
The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
The Arrivals by Sharon Olds I pull the bed slowly open, I open the lips of the bed, get the stack of fresh underpants out of the suitcase—peach, white, cherry, quince, pussy willow, I choose a color and put them on, I travel with the stack for the stack’s caress, dry and soft. I enter […]
The Thin People by Sylvia Plath
They are always with us, the thin people Meager of dimension as the gray people On a movie-screen. They Are unreal, we say: It was only in a movie, it was only In a war making evil headlines when we Were small that they famished and Grew so lean and would not round Out their […]
A Sorcerer Bids Farewell To Seem by Sylvia Plath
I’m through with this grand looking-glass hotel where adjectives play croquet with flamingo nouns; methinks I shall absent me for a while from rhetoric of these rococo queens. Item : chuck out royal rigmarole of props and auction off each rare white-rabbit verb; send my muse Alice packing with gaudy scraps of mushroom simile and […]
Miss Drake Proceeds To Supper by Sylvia Plath
No novice In those elaborate rituals Which allay the malice Of knotted table and crooked chair, The new woman in the ward Wears purple, steps carefully Among her secret combinations of eggshells And breakable hummingbirds, Footing sallow as a mouse Between the cabbage-roses Which are slowly opening their furred petals To devour and drag her […]
Landowners by Sylvia Plath
From my rented attic with no earth To call my own except the air-motes, I malign the leaden perspective Of identical gray brick houses, Orange roof-tiles, orange chimney pots, And see that first house, as if between Mirrors, engendering a spectral Corridor of inane replicas, Flimsily peopled. But landowners Own thier cabbage roots, a space […]
Burning The Letters by Sylvia Plath
I made a fire; being tired Of the white fists of old Letters and their death rattle When I came too close to the wastebasket What did they know that I didn’t? Grain by grain, they unrolled Sands where a dream of clear water Grinned like a getaway car. I am not subtle Love, love, […]
Who by Sylvia Plath
The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. Thie shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won’t notice. My heart is […]
Whitsun by Sylvia Plath
This is not what I meant: Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows, Bald eyes or petrified eggs, Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets, Lard-pale, sipping the thin Air like a medicine. The stopped horse on his chromium pole Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze. Your shirt of crisp linen Bloats like […]
Landowners by Sylvia Plath
From my rented attic with no earth To call my own except the air-motes, I malign the leaden perspective Of identical gray brick houses, Orange roof-tiles, orange chimney pots, And see that first house, as if between Mirrors, engendering a spectral Corridor of inane replicas, Flimsily peopled. But landowners Own thier cabbage roots, a space […]
Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town by T. S. Eliot
Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones– In fact, he’s remarkably fat. He doesn’t haunt pubs–he has eight or nine clubs, For he’s the St. James’s Street Cat! He’s the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street In his coat of fastidious black: No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers Or such […]
My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky I’d tear like a wolf at bureaucracy. For mandates my respect’s but the slightest. To the devil himself I’d chuck without mercy every red-taped paper. But this … Down the long front of coupés and cabins File the officials politely. They gather up passports and I give in My […]
What Then? by William Butler Yeats
His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]
Eclogue:–The ‘Lotments by William Barnes
_John and Richard._ JOHN. Zoo you be in your groun’ then, I do zee, A-workèn and a-zingèn lik’ a bee. How do it answer? what d’ye think about it? D’ye think ’tis better wi’ it than without it? A-recknèn rent, an’ time, an’ zeed to stock it, D’ye think that you be any thing in […]
Eclogue:–John An’ Thomas by William Barnes
THOMAS. How b’ye, then, John, to-night; an’ how Be times a-waggèn on w’ ye now? I can’t help slackenèn my peäce When I do come along your pleäce, To zee what crops your bit o’ groun’ Do bear ye all the zummer roun’. ‘Tis true you don’t get fruit nor blooth, ‘Ithin the glassèn houses’ […]