�What's That Smell in the Kitchen?�
All over America women are burning dinners.
It's lambchops in Peoria: it's haddock
in Providence; it's steak in Chicago:
tofu delight in Big Sur; red
rice
and beans in Dallas.
All over America women are burning
food
they're supposed to bring with calico
smile
on platters glittering like wax.
Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined
but
spewing out missiles of hot fat.
Carbonized despair presses like a clinker
from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.
If she wants to grill anything, it's
her husband spitted over a slow fire.
If she wants to serve him anything
it's
a dead rat with a bomb in its belly
ticking
like the heart of an insomniac.
Her life is cooked and digested,
nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.
Look, she says, once I was roast duck
on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.
Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.
Marge Piercy