Previously published in The Coachella Review
Thursday, my grandmother and I are
preparing corned beef hash for dinner.
The tins are stacked, blue bricks,
each one built like a bomb-shelter.
Standing on a stool, she shows me
how to twist a pendulum key around
the beef’s metal skin and empty the safe
without breaking the pyramid within.
This is the first unwrapping of many:
the potatoes and onions must be peeled,
chopped, chunked. Each ingredient is
heavy with home, solid with Northern certainty.
I watch as she constructs the stew,
craftswoman, conjurer, and I am
allowed to layer the last potatoes
in a quilt over an ocean of Oxo.
She carries the dish, steaming,
to the oven. We wait until it is
bubbling like a cauldron, potatoes
both softened and seared, then serve.
Yesterday, homesick, too far south,
I asked her to text me the recipe.
And my kitchen smelled of her kitchen,
of Thursdays, and our alchemy.
