by Dana Raja Wahab

Golden Shovel after Natalie Diaz


I.

It’s always a love poem with cookies, as if
I am, in fact, my mother’s daughter, although I
fought not to be. I thought love should
be free of tradition, should not come
from service—but a rare rib eye steak set upon
a bed of spinach and those sweet potatoes, your
favorite—they do the trick. Your cupped hands wander into my yellow-lit house
looking to be filled with butter and chipotle, and the lonely
saltshaker spilling with kindness, mixing it in
with blood and love and blood and love; the
recipe always calls for blood and love, like a mid-century West-
ern soap opera filmed on a small set in Texas,
where prickly pears peak in through the stone windows of the desert.


II.

Here I am again, writing about food! So let’s eat
fish this week, or shrimp—anything but steaks. My
body is craving lemon and salt and capers. Mediterranean meals
laid on brown ceramic plates with black olives beside us and a strawberry Jarritos between us; at
least it’s got real sugar, though I’ve never cared much for sugar at all. The
real pleasure lies in sampling the savory: tomatoes not yet red,
quartered and salted and soaked in olive oil, that which sits at the head of our table
and the center of our kitchen hearts; a dark bottle of
remembering, my mother standing there, but now you, sprinkling on your
plate a dash of black pepper, onto a fish from a foreign, warmer sea—the new home of your heart.

______________________________________________________________________

Dana Raja Wahab is a writer, illustrator, and educator from Miami. She worked for seven years as a teaching artist at The Cushman School and now teaches in O, Miami's Sunroom program, in addition to managing and editing O, Miami book projects. Dana holds an M.A. in Children's Literature and Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.