Rikki Santer

Kosher

Her mother brought it with her

from across the ocean. Ancestry,

the mouth said to the kitchen.

Architect your space, so she did again

in her rust belt home. Later my mother

tried for awhile in her newlywed bungalow.

Filled the soup pot from the waterfall deep

in Lithuanian forests, segregated foodware

chipped by lineage of duty, revered

a tattered cookbook—midrash with

grandmother marginalia in Yiddish.

Then her ranch home in the suburbs along

with the chaos of American children.

Salted memory of loin, heart, warm snout—

slipped fast by knife glinted in science

of slaughter. The kosher butcher with little

paper boats mounded with raw hamburger

so fresh it tasted like sweet copper. Slippery

chicken livers sliding into the maw

of her meat grinder that she cranked

to the lyrics of showtunes. Eventually

breakfasts of pop tarts and bacon

in months populated by TV dinners. 

Now it’s Sunday in my kitchen

and as close as I get is a box

of kosher salt in the cupboard

and a tub of vegan butter in the fridge.

Sunlight curls over Mother’s 1947

The Settlement Cook Book

(The way to a man’s heart)

with fingerprint stains and ingredient

spatterings, all alphabet of her trying on

the mantle of homemaker. And tucked

between pages, handwritten recipes

in her signature purple ink, evidence

of her domestic invention. So tonight

will be her spice cake drunk on

Manischewitz from the year

she added it to everything—

her sultry meatloaf, her funny fish balls,

her lunchbox sandwiches gobsmacked,

one third peanut butter, two thirds grape jelly

tipsy with wine.

In 2023, Rikki Santer was named Ohio Poet of the Year. Her forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. Please contact her through her website, https://rikkisanter.com.