If You Can Shake It, It Will Bake It

Each day produces yet another largely prix-fixe menu

whose particulars you do not learn until you‘ve sat down

in its ever-slightly altered venue – ping the chime you find

in front of you to tintinnabulate the message that you’re

ready for the ghostly cypher of a waiter who (mostly sooner,

rarely later) will lay out the unforeseen repast. It’s unlikely

you would last if there were not an understanding here –

which is to say, a demonstrated reverence on its and your

part for the idiosyncratic and the queer: in fact, a rabid taste

for no holds barred at all. It’s surely your reaction to its

come-ons which accounts for this audacious daily culinary

psychic windfall – if you can shake it, it will bake it: the vast

amassing on the plate of broiled expectations – lightly

dusted with minced bits of love and grated hate. You like

the musk of the arrival – piquant survival – of the plaintive

sigh in broth – with its funky hint of sloth; and savor, when

it’s possible, the jalapeño heat of lust, blistering when

impermissible, salted with mistrust. You’ll lick a subtle smile,

though generally not while forking in the load of tasty guile

which bloats you up on every other Tuesday. You’ve come
to rather like the goose that lays the egghead who can’t wait

to crack his shell-y skull into your bowl to ply you with his

intellectually indefensible pedantic bull: you find the whole
thing swell. And all you ever have to do is ring the bell.

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