The Invention of Cuisine

By Carol Muske-Dukes b. 1945 Carol Muske-Dukes

Imagine for a moment

the still life of our meals,

meat followed by yellow cheese,

grapes pale against the blue armor of fish.

Imagine a thin woman

before bread was invented,

playing a harp of wheat in the field.

There is a stone, and behind her

the bones of the last killed,

the black bird on her shoulder

that a century later

will fly with trained and murderous intent.

They are not very hungry

because cuisine has not yet been invented.

Nor has falconry,

nor the science of imagination.

All they have is the pure impulse to eat,

which is not enough to keep them alive

and this little moment

before the woman redeems

the sprouted seeds at her feet

and gathers the olives falling from the trees

for her recipes.

Imagine. Out in the fields

this very moment

they are rolling the apples to press,

the lamb turns in a regular aura of smoke.

See, the woman looks once behind her

before picking up the stone,

looks back once at the beasts,

the trees,

that sky

above the white stream

where small creatures live and die

looking upon each other

as food.

Carol Muske-Dukes, “The Invention of Cuisine” from Skylight (New York: Doubleday, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Carol Muske-Dukes. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Doubleday, 1997)

Biography

Carol Muske-Dukes was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1945. She earned a BA from Creighton University and an MA at San Francisco State University. Her collections of poetry include Camouflage (1975), Applause (1989), An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems (1997), Sparrow (2003), which was a National Book Award finalist, and Twin Cities (2011). In addition to poetry, Muske-Dukes has published two collections of essays, . . .

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