Upon Reading “Eminemental: Playing Hip-Hop to Cheese Produces the Funkiest Flavour, Say Scientists” by Will Lavin
In the notebook with the Top Secret gaff tape cover there are four recipes:
Pork Rub 1
Pork Rub 2
Brisket Rub
Death.
Between them are variations of powder and oil I read aloud in the kitchen. They come out red, draped in salt. Like a bugle yelping under the heel of medical terminology. People walk out like children and come back with no hair. Shatter across monologues that can no longer feel the floor. Across sad linoleum decades like loose change. Like bad theatre. Like a block print of fireworks.
A blue pact of pale dinners, skin conditions, vistas with compromises convenes on Tuesdays (how appropriate) and reconvenes when someone has died. Sometimes there is wine and cheese. “The cheese aged with Mozart has a relaxed flavor when compared to non-musical cheese. Already people have called requesting cheese that has listened to the blues, Balkan music, and ACDC.” I can no longer comment on the wine.
Last week we had a statue of fire /shivering with bacteria/ frantically wipe laughter from the mouths of wizards hiding behind her dress, apologize for them by names they hadn't formed, say Love is the angriest I've ever been. She worked full time and couldn't afford to drink.
The key to a good recipe is narrative.
I have one about a highway obstructed by axillary blooms. Subplots of lowing oil rigs, automatic doorways, fatal flaws with lipstick. You’ve been hearing this your whole life - an alarm swallows a dream. There is turmeric. Ginger. A speech that steps backward like a mirror covered in black cloth. A candle by an open window. A woman with a torch points out a clock stopped between numbers to people you cannot see.
The notebook is lost. There is no secret. If you find it, there’s an address on the inside. I’ll be in the kitchen at the top of the stairs, setting clocks back without music. Cooking something flavorless. Typing it all out. Every letter on this keyboard is the same.
S. Preston Duncan is a death doula and BBQist in rural orbit around Richmond, VA. He is the author of poetry collection and EP, THE SOUND IN THIS TIME OF BEING (BIG WRK, 2020). His work has been nominated for Best of the Net, commissioned by The Peace Studio, and translated into Chinese by Poetry Lab Shanghai. Recent publications include [PANK], Levee Magazine, Circle Show, The New Southern Fugitives, Atlas and Alice, and various anthologies.