Poem-A-Day #99 : A Cup of Coffee

A Cup of Coffee

The hands that touched these beans - they are sticky with the picking of the cherries - they are short and thick and calloused - this is a romanticized idea of 'the worker' it is held aloft by images of wrinkled sun-scarred faces missing teeth and wearing straw-based hats - it perpetuates through National Geographic correspondence from X Y Z - this wasn't supposed to go this way -

This cup was manufactured in China - was it pre or post 'we are now ok with this' China - is the ceramic kilned in some hive - the glaze is black and there is English on it telling us about the codes of hobos and the one that stands out is 'cranky woman or dog' - the image is a potato or a turd -

None of this is about the taste - it's too hot to drink the tendrils of steam off the surface are like those from hot springs - the white mist spends a time caressing the dark meniscus and then releases itself to feel the surrounds - it thinks it is free in this but then the weather realizes itself and the temperatures coincide and the white vanishes into nothingness - everythingness -

These are neither tender nor buttoned thoughts - this is a bitter drink - it feels as it goes down - the charcoal in the roast the turning in the barrel of that roaster - you can taste the flame on the gas - this is not Malaysian fat roasted coffee with its salt and butter and smoothness - this is edges - it is so very European despite being not at all European - and that is an important  discussion on absorption to have as well -

Poem-A-Day #90 : Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

     1
Here some cheese
in a shaker - or plastic container - feeling
for all the world
like sawdust

Put it on your pizza - on your pasta
it will taste like something full
will soak the grease

Pull itself from within and without

     2
When you make tortellini for the first time
you must sing a song

     3
Some vehicle-less wheels
sever themselves form shelving - they will go off to find horses to pull them

This will never be smooth - press your fingernail into the rind
it is like a candle or the skin of a pumpkin

Inside it is the color of squash - it looks like a tree chopped down
splinters itself and peels itself

     4
The milk is pure
it is a bucket a cloth wrapped around itself
a scarf a turban a broken promise of new life

It rests until it doesn't
until it forms itself around a center
the tiniest bacteria itching until a pearl coalesces into curd

Have you watched someone churn butter ?
how it's just liquid until it suddenly isn't
have you kissed that moment ?

     5
What knife
in the heart

When you need that spread
it will come

Paolo Terzi for The Talks