Have you ever had an experience with food that sticks in your memory? One that was so memorable, vivid, and personal that you can say it was a turning point in your life, that it is a portion of who you are? Something that becomes more than about the food but about human experience and interaction.
The other night I was at a restaurant/bar here in town with the Boyfriend. It was a poetry reading. Not my first, by any means. It jogged memories I had forgotten about when my girlfriends and I would go to a local venue and watch Slam Poetry. One of those girls on stage was a neighbor of mine, and I would hear her rehearsing from the front stoop, through open windows in our un-air conditioned, 100yr old building. Poetry readings are funny. The way they’re read or performed aloud. How the Author’s voice, when reading, becomes either integral or a hindrance to how the listener perceives the poem. Last Fridays event was hosted by a non-profit publishing group and they held a raffle to help fund their organization. Boyfriend and I chipped in, and bought 6 tickets. “I never win these things” I tell  him, “and if I do, it’s usually things I don’t want or need.” Guess who won something? It was a set, one issue of a writing magazine, the other a compilation book of poems and short stories of both fiction and non-fiction.
“What are we going to do with this?” we ask each other. “I know, you can put it in someone’s mailbox at work, that guy did to you the other day.”

So we left the event with our “prize” and drove home in the rain. We talked about the poems we heard. How some of them were great, some of them OK, and some of them I did not care for at all. We talked about all the cliché things poems can be about and how a select few words are mentioned so many times in poetry that they make a good poet sound like a beginner. Words like, God, Love, or comparing things to rivers, oceans and the sky. If you use those words in a poem, that poem had better be damn good. Saturday though, I was flipping though the book, wondering what the heck might be inside. That whole “never judge a book by its cover” ringing through my head. Perhaps there was something good in it. Turns out, the first thing I flipped to was wonderful. I found it well written, thought-provoking, and just a joy to read. Granted, it was about food, about childhood memories and family, so it was right in my wheel house. Titled a word I had never heard before, it made me curious. What the heck is a “gagoots” anyway? When you look it up you find two different meanings, which is the funny thing about poetry, the double and triple meanings behind the words written on a page. Is it about just one thing, or about the other thing, or both or neither. Poetry is supposed to make you feel something, make you think, make a moment or a memory come to life. Words are powerful tools, so is food. Put the two together watch what happens.

And now, I give you, Gagoots.

Gagoots

We met when I was seven

on the common ground

of a good bowl of spinach.

You couldn’t have known

that I was the one who had once spate

out her Beechnut brand squash at

the babysitter.

Had you been in the picture back then,

you would have brought home

some fresh

zucchini from your father’s garden

and made gagoots for me.

You would have cooked them to life!

You would have turned

the seeded round slices

into parmesaned mystical morsels.

You would have given me credit

at the wise age of one

for detecting

processed veggies

with no taste and dulled color.

Sensing an openness at eight,

you introduced

sautéed escarole,

a bitter but totally rewarding

two-toned winter green,

fixed with garlic and olive oil.

I slowly savored

and admired

your elegant and heath-conscious taste

buds and craved

the delicious vocabulary

you were teaching me:

elephant ears, chick peas, fennel, pepperoncini.

For some unknown reason though,

I drew the line at fava beans.

But had we had more time together,

I bet

you would have made even them, vicia faba,

my new favorite,

since, according to tradition,

when all other crops failed,

they kept the Sicilians

(like you kept us –your famiglia)

from starving.

–Carol Ann Moon