"my kissmaking hand and the iron bedpot"

Mississippi, collard greens, lessons, walking meditation

Mary Proctor, visionary artist of Florida, 1960—

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cutting greens

by Lucille Clifton

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and I taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.

from Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1980)

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Reflections on the Poem and Beyond

Dear Ones,

Tonight, in honor of this poem, I made collard greens with red onions, glazed with balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and maple syrup.

I've stopped cooking with oil, sauteeing foods in vegetable broth or tomato sauce instead. I am lighter on my feet, less comatose in the morning. This gives me more energy to feel what’s happening in the world; to stare, agape, to find some tiny, useful action, or to choose uselessness for a day.

I'm slow cooking a new veggie stock tonight using my trimmings and savings from the last few months. It's complex, fragrant ~ yam skins and potato skins, red and white onions and onion skins, older okra, collard green stems, limp celery, floppy carrots, jalapeno ends and stems, a whole head of too-dry garlic, peppercorns, star anise, miso. It'll give me three generous quarts, at least. It puts me in mind of making a fine quilt out of clothes that got too frayed. I have no idea what the flavor will be. There’s no recipe but what I collected in a gallon silicone bag in the freezer, so it’s a concentrated infusion of two months of meals. The flavor of time.

I’ll strain the spent vegetables, let them cool and throw them under the pecan tree for the insects to suck the water out of.

What does this month in your life taste of? What are you using up, reusing, giving away?

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Today I’ve also shared a story about a visit to a Buddhist monastery on my other Substack, and personal letter expanding on the themes in this brief sketch. I’d love it if you went there to read it and dropped a note to say hello.

Thanks for being here. I couldn’t do it without you.