This spring I was delighted to learn that “The Kitchen Poem” had found a home at Dirty Chai Magazine. I missed the issue when it came out, so here it is now. Here’s a PDF download of the Summer 2015 Issue of Dirty Chai.
And since it’s more 90 days since it appeared there, here’s a reprint:
The Kitchen Poem
for Adrienne Rich
A kitchen is where a woman belongs sometimes
not because I should cook for you
but because here when one sits at the table
with a bowl of something one realizes
what it is to slow down
Because here there is always food
and yet I can go hungry
Because there is a smell of things cooking,
and the smell is good.
Because I can spread tablecloths
and be unmolested.
Because God loves a kitchen
and I feel powerful here.
Because a kitchen is where civilization began.
Because some men are shy of the kitchen
and those men I can do without.
Because kitchens come in many shapes and sizes.
Because Allen Ginsberg never wrote a poem about a kitchen.
Because in a kitchen, a woman can take what has been
dismembered,
forgotten
and remember it.
Because in a kitchen we put things together
that have been cut apart
and call it food.
