Marge Piercy

 

What's That Smell in the Kitchen

 

All over America women are burning dinners.

It�s lambchops in Peoria; it�s haddock

in Providence; it�s steak in Chicago;

tofu delight in Big Sur; red

rice and beans in Dallas.

All over America women are burning

food they�re supposed to bring with calico

smile on platters glittering like wax.

Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined

but spewing out missiles of hot fat.

Carbonized despair presses like a clinker

from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.

If she wants to grill anything, it�s

her husband spitted over a slow fire.

If she wants to serve him anything

it�s a dead rat with a bomb in its belly

ticking like the heart of an insomniac.

Her life is cooked and digested,

nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.

Look, she says, once I was roast duck

on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.

Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

 

1983