[Prompt: Write a poem about a haunting, real or imagined, detailed or abstract]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Haunted by Foods Passed<\/strong><\/p>\n Who could forget loaves of bread stuffed with chocolate-covered cherries, perfect for making French toast on slow Saturday mornings?\u00a0 That bakery on 4th<\/sup> or 9th<\/sup> street (I always mixed them up) in Vancouver long defunct.<\/p>\n Copenhagen pastries hard with solid butter, perfectly formed by that Dane now retired.\u00a0 Even the waxed paper they clung to indelibly haunts me.<\/p>\n Real Greek pizza, dough formed at six each morning by Marguerite\u2014long passed\u2014who spoke no English.\u00a0 Her coarse gray braid and gnarled hands both reminded me of olive trees in black-and-white photos.\u00a0 Village Pizza today: a bland facsimile.<\/p>\n Chocolate marshmallows that puffed and smoked on sticks over beach fires; slip off the crispy shell and toast the molten middle again.\u00a0 What corporation would discontinue such a thing?<\/p>\n Big yellow papaya from Hawaii, sliced down the middle and emptied of black glistening seeds.\u00a0 I filled the hollow with large-curd cottage cheese so many mornings, until the markets stopped getting you and we\u2019ve got these wizened, unripe, expensive failures now!<\/p>\n Montr\u00e9al: you are famous for smoked meat but your sesame bagels I will never get over.\u00a0 Hand formed, poached in honey water, baked in a woodfire oven.\u00a0 You still exist, but I can never afford to visit you again.\u00a0 Ditto New York cream cheese with seasonings and diced vegetables.<\/p>\n Fresh chinook salmon, you are my favorite food ever.\u00a0 I would stand at the fish counter and make sure I got the line-caught Sitka king with the most belly fat.\u00a0 I bought you for my father\u2019s last great meal.\u00a0 But now I feel like I\u2019m taking you directly out of the mouth of a starving orca whale.<\/p>\n Something in a Chinese restaurant in Durham, New Hampshire, I called \u201corgasm chicken.\u201d\u00a0 You were coated in sesame seeds and I could still cry from missing you after I graduated and moved.<\/p>\n Chicken in an Indian restaurant in Cambridge, England: you were marinated in yogurt and I\u2019ve tried to order you in every Indian restaurant since.\u00a0 I have failed to find you.<\/p>\n Sara Lee pecan coffee cake before trans fat was banned.\u00a0 You and Lorna Doone cookies were superb.\u00a0 RIP.<\/p>\n White cheese with smoked pork right inside, bought at a roadside stand in Vermont in the 80s and never to be found on the internet.<\/p>\n Orange-chocolate ice cream in California.\u00a0 Soft serve rolled in chocolate powder in Denmark.<\/p>\n Ontario butter tarts.<\/p>\n Patak\u2019s Kabouli sauce.<\/p>\n Fresh Elk liver and onions.<\/p>\n Grandma\u2019s canned green beans.<\/p>\n Hob Nobs.<\/p>\n Apple beer.<\/p>\n Jello 1-2-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Prompt: Write a poem about a haunting, real or imagined, detailed or abstract] Haunted by Foods Passed Who could forget loaves of bread stuffed with chocolate-covered cherries, perfect for making French toast on slow Saturday mornings?\u00a0 That bakery on 4th or 9th street (I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":756,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/756"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144581,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144573\/revisions\/144581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}