"How To Cook Your Family" by Sam Herschel Wein

​Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a Chicago-based poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. Their second chapbook, GESUNDHEIT!, a collaboration with Chen Chen, was part of the 2019-2020 Glass Poetry Press Series. He co-founded and edits Underblong. Recent work can be found in Moon City Review, Sundog Lit, and Bat City Review, among others. Perchance, read more at samherschelwein.com.

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How to Cook Your Family


First
Six mixing bowls. Fourteen blenders. Who needs this
many kitchen aids? An avalanche of appliances from
the taut, turquoise shelves. Every rubber spatula you’ve
ever dreamed of in the pull-out cabinet next to the
stove, packed so tight it’s stuck shut, inaccessible

Then
Mother makes Challah most weeks, though she often
makes extras, for the weeks she wants just to pull
one from the freezer. A special Hungarian mixing
stick, an overnight dough, hidden recipes she changes
just barely over time, they’re impossible to copy

Next
Clean out grandma’s house. She’s in a senior’s apartment
complex now. Not a nursing home, my mother says aloud
for herself. Though Grandma wouldn’t know. Her
Alzheimer’s, ten years old. I’ve inherited many of
the extra kitchen bowls, tools, essentials she kept buying.

Don’t forget to mix
Yeast for the bread to rise. Raisins on holidays. Gefilte
fish from scratch, Brisket recipe from Great Aunt
Esther. My grandmother was the best cook in town,
in the Jewish community. My mother was the best
cook in town, in the Jewish community. Where I grew up.

Sprinkle, ever so gently
sesame seeds. Sprinkle dirt on the grave. Sprinkles
in your eyes, reading a speech goodbye. All good
cooking comes in pinches, my mother once said.
And she lives that way, too. Pinching out her sadness,
the sprinkles hardly visible. Not even coarse.

Leave out to cool
I was like that. I was a balloon of smiles. They’d
shoot out of me with so much force. Pinching back
my hair, back my hurt. I’m learning to unfurl.
​I have a book of recipes, but I don’t need them.
This tart, I baked anew. My own strawberries.