The Friday Poem on 21/01/22
Amanda Joshua’s poem ‘the kitchen’ describes a time many of us can relate to, when lockdown dictated unexpected and often unlooked-for living arrangements. While these regulations were often the cause of distress, in ‘the kitchen’ the narrowed horizons, and the focus on simple everyday business of preparing and cooking food, yield a different result. The poem is intimate, tender, and life-affirming. We love the easy, conversational flow, the quirky humour, and the way Joshua brings the poem to a close gently, with a nod towards an unknowable future.
the kitchen
The first thing I learn about you in the kitchen is that it’s impossible for us to cook together without contemplating double homicide
On the second day of lockdown you go out for “essentials” and return with 100 tea bags
You have the gene that makes coriander taste like soap
You don’t like capsicum and you hate peas
“not the taste, the texture”
You make food the same way you do everything else:
Meticulously, diligently
I make defiant mounds of mashed potatoes because my mum didn’t let me have it growing up
I leave all the heating elements on and I burn the onions
But you eat my haphazard sandwiches anyway
The fourth thing I learn about you in the kitchen is that your mum’s name is Jenny
She teaches chemistry and you dropped it in year 10
You have a brain for science though, you relish fact and trivia and the pantry of your mind is stocked from Thursday night viewings of ‘The Chase’ with your dad
I inspect a carrot I’m peeling and say “did you know it would be as easy to bite through a finger as this carrot?”
“That’s just not true. Human bones are as strong as cement”
You like mushrooms, unsweetened peanut butter (gross) and lemon, lime and bitters
You also like pointing out settings I didn’t know existed on the microwave I’ve had for 6 years
You mourn my lidless pots and lack of wooden spoons
But you only laugh when I come home with lots of muffins and no bread or milk
Start helping me draw up our grocery lists and reach around me routinely to turn down the heat on the onions
I slot away the cutting board and forget the state mandated for us to be here
The 17th thing I learn about you in this kitchen is that you’ve learned where the vegetable peeler lives and how I like the plates and bowls stacked
There’s familiarity somewhere in the way you know my cupboards and I want to sit and grow fat with it
But we’re already entering round 2 of the great carrot-finger-chomping debate
“Since when can you bite through cement??”
There’s a pandemic raging just outside the kitchen window
but it’s misted safely over with steam from the kettle you seem to be constantly boiling
for tea, or for soaking the pans overnight
You shell garlic and I throw away the peels
I facetime Alex while I cook chicken and you pop your head in to say hi
We have our first fight in this kitchen and you eat your pie quietly even though it isn’t properly defrosted
We make up and you make marinade for the steak
I put garden flowers in an empty bitters bottle for the middle of our dining table
And melt with the vanilla ice cream you scooped for me
The 23rd thing I learn about you in our kitchen is that you like your steak rare
I’m talking blood-oozing-out rare (“it’s not blood it’s myoglobin” “isn’t that just another name for bloo-” “No you’re thinking of haemoglobin”)
You grimace as I triumphantly make you cook mine bone dry
You make fun of my “garbage noodles” for weeks but when I mess up chicken fried rice
You fill your plate twice and eat every last mushy bite
The 39th thing I learn about you in our kitchen is that you don’t really ‘do spice’
But you’re appreciative of my curry regardless and you’re adding three, four
five chillis to your own creations
You tell me why your sister hates her job and I tell you why I stopped talking to my dad for three years
I receive never-ending lectures on the dangers of blunt knives and never-ending cups of warm tea
The seal on the oven door is broken
We warm ourselves in the heat that escapes and try to teach abandoned ducklings to swim in the sink
You’ve stopped making choking noises when I use scissors to cut up mushrooms
And I’ve forgotten all about the virus-infected streets outside
The 52nd thing I learn about you in our kitchen is that on days you can’t pull yourself out of bed, you count to five then get up
I swing my legs back and forth over our counter while you’re frying up mince
I breathe in that good garlicky tomatoey smell and your shower-wet hair
“I’ll give you two options” you inform me seriously, adding milk to warm the day-old mashed potatoes
“We can watch a film tonight or an episode of The Undateables”
One of these days there will be fewer people in the hospitals
You’ll go back to making dinner at an address we don’t share
And the kitchen
will just be a place I make myself food
I’ll slather my toast with unsweetened peanut butter and make tea the way I’ve seen you do it 100 times
I’ll count to five then let you go
