Cooking Among Our Cupboards

i prefer empty paper towel rolls
to film daddy when we cook hot dogs
for dinner. daddy takes the marigold

apron blushed with bleach in two spots.
it’s the one i always give him & he gives
Julia Child a beard & Bajan accent

his tenor breaking both our funny bones:
& once dey have boiled you must take dem
& slice each into triangles like dis. you see?

you see is daddy’s cue for me to hold tight
onto that paper towel roll, tilt
my braided ponytail & zoom in

to the rubbed-away cutting board
as rice gripes in a pot’s humidity & onions
perspire to the finish on a back burner.

daddy tells me, we never need much salt.

he says often, we never need much.

reminds me, you can cook good without salt
(and butter).

the things he says would rile the real Julia.
bottle clanking bottle in the cupboard. its oak
-knotted belly binged with curry & cumin

& grounded sorts whose names
i am still learning. the sort of things
ships once risked their hulls for in vexed

seas & occupied ambitions, i would soon learn.
each bottle past my tippytoed arms on otherwise
unoccupied shelves i never notice

as daddy tells me, zoom in
come closer & closer & closer

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Dana Tenille Weekes lives in the swirl of Washington, DC, where she navigates the worlds of law, policy, and politics. Some of her poems can be found, or are forthcoming, in A Gathering of the Tribes, Apogee, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Elevation Review, and Torch Literary Arts. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist in Rhino Poetry’s 2022 Founders’ Prize.