Cooking Words Poem by Isioma Isichei

Cooking Words



Court lady!
Hiding in the flower of maidenhood.

Greetings I bring as coffle around my neck
On this auspicious day, me, faithful retainer
Of many rejections lodged at your stable.

The moon, high up in the sky and the breeze,
Grazing the surface of the water both stand as
Support beams to my courtesy, ready to make you silk bedding
For many hands make light work.

No matter the magnitude of the rains
Wetting your hideout with flowing water like a fuming ocean
Overrunning its bank, I would spin a closely knitted yarn of
Compassion to cover your body dancing as leaves in the wind,
Your tent in a mountain hermitage away from the rains

Warmed by fire, and dog of dogs; my mongrel would be there,
Sniffing for the presence of snakes predating in the dark.
With the water that is gone between us,
It cannot turn the mill. So I stand, amendable in attitude,
Not as a moth flying into a blaze at night. I stand
Like a boiling kettle steaming with hot love

In this moonlit flirt
Of tale, desire strong as the love for one’s country.

I am no mere wordsmith farting out benevolent words
Though my lips may be craftier than estimated in
The marketplace where the cost of buying your rare worth

Is pretty steep. Since I have learnt to steal,
I’ll go around the country, stealing old wrongs from the
Harsh corridors of power for your sake and hide
Them away inside the willows laid down for change

While I nestle closer towards your heartbeats, as the other
Black days gone by, like a rat in the grass
Approaching green snake; willing meal
For your jealous affection, even if with my tight stipends
Where power shuts its door firmly against my chest

Making
My breasts to go aflutter
With the boil of desire, gathering many pus in it, to be
Pressed when roosters’ crow and morning dews sprinkle blessings
Upon us for I have changed my language.

Now,
As fish in water and tiger in the mountains,
I cook words with stubborn resolve, sloshing and hunting!

Hear me out, Court Lady,
As my ladled meal to you furnaces your mouth
With the hotness of cooking words, but this time

Not playing for a stake.
I’m no dog that keeps habits forever.

Sunday, May 25, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: friendship
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