The Eating Club Poem by Jacqui Thewless

The eating club
meets
regularly, now,
on Wednesday evenings
to eat:

that is its primary purpose,
since,
for various reasons,
its members enjoy food.

Only the cook is fat, however.

Around a small mahogany table
that has been dressed with all
the paraphernalia of ritual eating
four people sit opposite each other in my dining room.

Two people bring the wine.
One brings taciturnity,
cigarette – smoke,
and a hopelessly swinging leg.

Each person, in turn, chooses the menu
for the next week’s banquet
and I make all
the necessary preparations
as faultlessly as I can.

There is always
An entree, usually from the sea,
such as local crab- meat
with a silky dressing made of virgin oil
and vinegar and yolks of eggs,
a spoonful of brandy and tomato-sauce.
Prawns, perhaps,
with wild rocket and a cucumber or else
a bowl of green-lipped mussels
from antipodal seas.

We all enjoy the colours of their shells while we are eating them
and I put everything into their broth.

The main course can be anything we like
so long as it involves meat,
fish or game or poultry,
vegetables or grains and fruits –
and O, eggs, and the products of a dairy; -
any combination of these marvellous foods.

We talk
about
our lives
while we are eating.

Puddings are my speciality.

To everyone, with every choice dessert, I tender cream.
I tell them it is fine to become fat, and to enjoy the rice with cream and cinnamon.
I urge them to revel in the tarts,
to savour sweet bananas and the home-made strawberry ice-cream.

Fancy, I find, is a seasonable thing,
and frequently depends upon the weather.
Red cabbage with apple and sultanas, quince jam and mashed
potatoes goes so well with steaks of venison in spring.

Parsnips, being sweet, go well with lamb -
provided that the leg is roasted with garlic and rosemary.

Frankly, everything depends upon the flavour
and consistency of each accompanying sauce.

We chat.
We drink our wine, and eat.

Meanwhile,
one of the four suffers in silence.
She fights with pain
from the involuntary movement in her leg
and heart’s aching.
The rest are only sitting here because of her.

I found her in a hospital for poorly souls.
We sat outdoors together,
smoking cigarettes and
quietly becoming friends.

Then, sitting next to her,
a man who works with her husband,
who knows everything-there-is-to-know
about birds and seals and cows,
because he’s worked with them, too, now comes here to eat.

Next to him, my friend’s husband is dipping a crust into a sauce.
I put everything into my sauces; -
Science as well as sensuality and years
of stirring pans.

When my friend has finished
with the wine, the conversation, and the pain
they all rise from their chairs.

Then comes the putting on of coats
and the agreement, once again,
on Wednesday
to meet
and eat.