Barbara J. Hamby

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Food and Poetry

Love it or hate it, no one is neutral about the taste of liver and onions. I don’t eat the onions anymore; my stomach takes offense, but I love the liver. We had calves liver with onions and a yam for dinner tonight. I just had another little piece of leftover liver for a late dessert.

I spent a lot of frustrating time today accomplishing very little--working on memoir stories. I decided to find some poems I remember writing that would fit in with some of the stories. It turned into a hunting expedition. Some poems are on one computer, some on another. Some are in Word; others in Word Perfect. Having been written over a period of fifteen years, their titles are in obscure corners of my memory, if anywhere at all. I located one little philosophical four-liner that I don’t even remember writing. It was something like finding a favorite outfit in the back of a closet that you’d forgotten about. I found one of those last night when I was separating clothes to pack for our upcoming trip.

Here is a poem I’m going to find a place for. It expresses a facet of my personality.

Girls’ Night Out

Dottie drove me to “Girls’ Night Out.”
Announced in the Unitarian
bulletin, it sounded like fun.

Actually, I didn’t know what
to expect - definitely not
a naked man jumping out
of a cake.  Even liberals
have limits.

In the sun on a patio
bench, I heard, “Try this better
than sex salad, remember my
better than sex cake?”
Then, “Look at these shots of my grandchildren,
aren’t they adorable?” I enjoyed
the accounts of recent travels,
but when we got to instructions
on sewing tea cozies, tote bags,
and other bazaar items,
my attention wandered, and I
remembered Presbyterian
women’s circles, domestic
dervishes sharing secrets
and working feverishly for
their church.  A dunce domestically,
I didn’t fit in then or now.  Bored,
I waited for Dottie to get
ready to go home, and smiled sweetly.