Forklift, Ohio

Ezra Pound Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
2 ¼ cup sugar, divided
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
6 eggs, room temperature, separated
3 cups sifted self-rising flour (measure after sifting)
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup buttermilk
1 poet, room temperature

Directions: 
Cream butter with 1 ½ cups sugar
Start writing The Cantos
Blend in vanilla, lemon juice & zest
Add egg yolks, one at a time
Get a job as Yeats's secretary and take up the occult
Stir baking soda into the buttermilk
To the first mixture, add sifted flour alternately with buttermilk, blending well after each addition
Introduce yourself to T. S. Eliot then "fix" his poems while writing The Cantos
Beat egg whites until frothy, then gradually beat in the remaining ¾ cup sugar
Ask Hemingway for boxing tips
Beat until egg whites form stiff peaks (this will take a few minutes)
Fold the egg white mixture gently into batter until well incorporated
Spend lots of time supporting your favorite fascist régime
Spoon the batter into a generously greased and floured ten-inch tube pan or a bread pan
Look more than slightly insane in photographs
Bake at 350 degrees for 60 to 75 minutes, or until cake tests done
A toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean
Become tragically involved in a ménage à trois with your wife and a violinist
Cool on a rack then carefully remove pan and transfer to cake plate
Sift confectioners sugar over cake top
Serve as is, or with a fruit or lemon sauce
Finish The Cantos
Die.

from The First Ape to Whisper Love

******

We were composed of unique frequencies.

I was mineral and she was water. Expand.

I was freshly squeezed fruit and pancakes

she was the syrup and butter, breakfast-in-bed,

the fork with which I ate. The sheets were oranges

and crème, she wore them like a dress.

When she spread them on the floor

it was like watching Moonflower blossom.

Mercury

Floating in a vat of mercury, in a high bath of atmosphere,
my little gloves on, the color of skin, their 20,000 feet
of fringe at the knuckles, their many suede strings
dipping into the core of the earth, like an unsocial fondue.

Or maybe that was the Rebecca Horn show we saw together
20 years ago. When the Guggenheim was the Guggenheim.
And Prada was Prada with $5,000 shoes.

Everything seems to run into breakfast, even the lawnmower
buzzing along, making its rows in another state over.
We're city folk. Don't you hate when people say that?
City is a state of mind, of being. That's even worse.

There are so many things to be and to be afraid of being
and not so many to be content with just leaving alone.

The best lessons come from the bag bursting with wet trash
and somebody's cat a couple days dead in the bush
and the dish of mercury that looks like liquid candy
and maybe it is. What pipe are you pissing up, Captain You,

when you confirm you're nothing but your images?
The Indiana corn in its rows of yellow grandeur. 
The mistake. The rake. Our love for the invisible.

Recipe

have Sue shoot the deer if you can't shoot the deer
you know where your food comes from
but do keep the deer in mind
think of its eye that blinks
or once would
as you mince the meat
venison cooks leathery
so add cream for fat
also an egg, beaten with the cream
cook the onions and garlic in butter for fat
in advance for subtlety
mix the stock with the wine in advance
because that means it's for cooking
and cook the meat covered for texture
thick meat think of it