– An Easy Spread –

MOTHER’S DILLED POTATOES
The potato is a most comforting vegetable. —the Silver Palate Cookbook

Twenty-four tiny, scrubbed red
potatoes :

boiled, dried : combine with
butter :

melted, seasoned to taste : just
salt & pepper :

serve at once, after tossing with
dill.

*

I.

Sound is stuck in her pot of potatoes :
steam clanks copper top against body,

till its froth bubbles over & crackles :
brief it burns, shrill buzz & furious heat,

before it crusts on the stovetop : soiled
old Idaho Golds, like mud-crusted hippos

left in the sun too long, sit imprisoned
in her Chinese porcelain bowl : on which

blue dragons battle, blow blue fire, torching
the kitchen in quietude : no sanctuary at all.

II.

Mother says, 8 tablespoons of sweet butter :
it’s directed at me, but I refuse to speak

the language of recipes : all imperatives,
few outcomes surpass disaster : what’s a

tablespoon of butter? Furthermore, what the
hell is sweet butter? Is there some real difference?

She says, cooking’s not a game of chance : but,
I prefer to imagine it a gamble : the rules,

followed in faith, make the meals inevitable :
but, no recipe can populate a dining table.

III.

Spice rack stocked : sea salt & black pepper
is all she uses : infuses melted sweet butter

with sound : wooden mills grind, relentless :
season to taste : but, all we’ll taste is pepper :

black bits of bite & sting : & there’s salt for
the wounds they’ll make : even pumice stone

could never cleanse our palates, crusted with
cracked pepper : as corns cloistered up, we’re

stuck between the silence & teeth of her mill :
she hopes we’ll fall where our places are set.

IV.

At the window, she spies on sprigs of dill :
it grows furious & needs so little attention :

she takes care to not forget it’s there : she
sits in that garden before most dinners : &

most days, I think she prays out there : or,
curses : potatoes : a most comforting vegetable :

rather, tubers : orbs of starch, misshapen :
mother bends her days around simple wishes :

potatoes tossed in fresh dill : melted butter :
salted, peppered : a family dinner : served at once.

Poem by guest writer Jack Snyder, an MFA student at George Mason University.