Tonight's Poet Corner: Vegetable Oil

Vegetable Oil
by Belinda Roddie

People play a big part in
washing the soul with
quietly dying meats and
X-ray looks into a pot of
rice, a leg of chicken, a
yellow-spotted liver just
sizzling and waiting to be greased. The
zest of a high-class meal does not
taste as good as the meltdown of the
angry man who cooks it in the kitchen.
Unless the angry man is a father or
brother who serves the head of the
vicar or the priest with relish and a
cooling spot of toxic fury. Cooking is a
welcoming but absolutely
desperate form of science - the mixing and
yolking of eye whites with the need to
entice or invent before the food is even tried.
Zeke the chef makes lamb no differently than
Franky the farmer, who pulls up carrots with
aggressive hands and more aggressive heart.
Go beyond the kitchen and you will find sad
boys and girls crying over too much salt.
Have yourself a slice of cake bought from a store.
Call it storebought, but it was made by someone,
iced and frosted by a person. Not a machine, like we
deign it. Like we think. A red strip of beef, a
just baked chicken breast, french fries, pizza,
e-z macaroni in a box. We make art in the hopes of
kindling some fire in a fat man's stomach.
Forget style. Forget presentation. Forget flavor. The
last remaining thought we should have about food is the
gentleman who brought it to us in a big, floppy white hat.
May he tell a story in his torment that we couldn't
happen to think of on our own. We
never stop to wonder who the muffin man really
is. And whether or not he's burned himself with
oil.