Pat Buik
Pork chops and Rice
This is before the days
of microwave ovens
when shops shut for Easter.
You have just returned from abroad.
The telephone rings to announce
an eager Chinese couple
inviting themselves to lunch.
You take four pork
chops out of the freezer
place in a blue casserole
with chopped sage and onion,
season, bake in the oven
on 5 for forty minutes
start thinking tomatoes
and frozen runner beans
and yes, it has to be rice
there aren’t any potatoes
but before you are half ready
they’re beaming on the doorstep
with an unexpected surprise -
their doctor brother-in-law
who gave you a sumptuous meal
at home in Kuala Lumpur
three years before.
The wife comes into
the pan-manic kitchen.
Before she helps to divide
four chops into five
both ‘laughing’ it off
her eyes bulge like marbles.
She’s quietly horrified
at the way you cook rice -
and tells your daughter so
three years later.
of microwave ovens
when shops shut for Easter.
You have just returned from abroad.
The telephone rings to announce
an eager Chinese couple
inviting themselves to lunch.
You take four pork
chops out of the freezer
place in a blue casserole
with chopped sage and onion,
season, bake in the oven
on 5 for forty minutes
start thinking tomatoes
and frozen runner beans
and yes, it has to be rice
there aren’t any potatoes
but before you are half ready
they’re beaming on the doorstep
with an unexpected surprise -
their doctor brother-in-law
who gave you a sumptuous meal
at home in Kuala Lumpur
three years before.
The wife comes into
the pan-manic kitchen.
Before she helps to divide
four chops into five
both ‘laughing’ it off
her eyes bulge like marbles.
She’s quietly horrified
at the way you cook rice -
and tells your daughter so
three years later.
Page(s) 13
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The