Published February 4, 2010

One of the earliest Muslim cookery books from Baghdad described food as ‘the noblest and most consequential of the six pleasures’ (the others were drink, clothes, sex, scent and sound).”
-Lizzie Conningham from her book Curry

White bread, red meat and blue blood
make the tri colored flag
of conquest.
This is the Parsee dish that the British
liked best.
When everything is allowed
and nothing has flavor.

I massaged your aching heart with ice cream;
the ecstasy of being eaten.
Take you apricocks or pear plums,
reduced to meaty terms-

Our lips flush.
I wipe my hands on the apron,
and turn the volume up.
Savages could more easily follow
the ape’s vegetarian delight.
Too long, too late I lost the taste
for my own pleasure-
everything is allowed
and nothing has flavor.

And I am stuffed, exuberant with this
great feast of senses, gluttony
of bliss.
We eat what we like.