I’m dispassionate about eating food, but more and more into food in fiction and poetry. The speakers in Shannan Mann’s pair of new poems are eating through annual celebrations. Shannan’s stuff is bold and cool. It’s tough, as in muscled:
... To make a moral statement is not my goal. A knot in your gut is my goal ...
But the guard comes down with surprises; sometimes funny, sometimes weird. I love Mann’s endings. Instead of trying to stick a crooked landing, Mann just acrobats out. -AV
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NOTE: Reading on your phone? An image at the end shows the intended line breaks.
Birthday
S to K
There was so much meat
and you know how I feel
about that. The Mandarin,
flagpoled with gardenias,
saw the vine of my family
arrive, smile, settle, take
photos, and then eat. No
one said anything. Maybe
a few words passed under
the table here and there,
but that was it. Betrayal
runs through blood, love
is proxy for envy. Koi
fish and parrots filled
the restaurant and they
were real. Unlike anything
any of us said to the other.
Ana ate rice and cake. I ate
wind and water. My brother
burped seventeen times.
The rest gorged on bones.
We all end up finishing
what keeps us alive
in the end, don’t we?
Biryani
K to S
How coincidental it is
biryani day in the office.
Two men have delivered
a giant vessel. At least
three chickens were born
to feed us. I wish I could
count the exact number
of people who eat meat,
and how many chickens
will be snatched their will
to live. To make a moral
statement is not my goal.
A knot in your gut is my
goal. If I could, I would eat
chickens goats and buffaloes
for breakfast lunch and dinner.
In Maharashtra, the day before
monsoon is called Gatari. People
do not eat meat or drink
in monsoon, to purify
themselves for Ganpati visarjan,
but Gatari is a day of debauchery.
For people who need logic
to believe: our digestive system
is weak due to lack of sunlight
under overcast sky, and water
is contaminated by insects
bacteria and virus increasing
the chance of diseases in animals.
If people look close enough at faith,
it loses its charm. It takes a sober
person to and reason in belief,
and a smarter one to forgo
the need for reason. Faith
that begins with blood,
life that begins with rape.
Today is the day people
have historically drank so
much that they will be found
in the gutter the next day.
How brave to get up from
the gutter take a bath
and ring the doorbell
of the house of God.
Shannan Mann is the Founding Editor of ONLY POEMS. Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Poetry Daily, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, december, The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH, and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared in Tolka Journal and Going Down Swinging. More here: shannanmann.com.
UNRELATED:
Shannan, Karan, and Ana; a little family.