Feasts

Feasts

Feasts

(A Song for Spice Girls Everywhere)


When at nights you feel
On another’s tongue
Slanderous asafoetida

Lime’s quick murderous knife
Sliding in among
Wild strawberry orgies

Arabesques of garlic
Curvaceous around
The sentinel cloves

You wonder about desire
How it can be found
Delicate as rose water

Or frank as coriander
Rising from your lover’s
Breath, mustard fumey

What lingers after
You consume each other
Is this memory of spices

Dancing salt waltzes
And mint fritillaries
Waving to parsley fronds

Which is why the milky
Delicacy of Bangla mishti
Mystical Varanasi rabri

Mysore pak melting piously
In your tolerant maws
Jalebi’s intricate twists

Like signatures support
Only a lesser cause
Affection, but not love

If you’re truly hungry
You must melt the world
Into paprika agonies

Tympanum of turmeric
Masking rosemary swirls
And cumin confetti

Falling in the basil dusk
As you wander through
Legendary cinnamon groves

Even the jumpy machinations
Of ginger must taste to you
Sweet, if you have feasted on love.