It's Still Life

A List Poem: A Bit of Rhetoric on Turmeric

the knobs of soft butter and chicken thighs,
the yellows of onion, garlic and ginger, add
the cumin, the cardamon and cinnamon,
the Kashmiri chillis, some garam masala,
two bay leaves from the garden. tomatoes.
then fenugreek rolled between two fingers,
its scent, a trembling light just before dark,
its aroma caught in a burnish dust, a cloud
of ambered turmeric. it’s a foreign language.

it’s turmeric, it’s a golden El Dorado that
calms fire in your brain, a stirred fevered
yellow brew, an arsenic dawn, turmeric
bright as a hawk’s bell, copper and gold
hammered into a pendant sun, a colour
mined as if for riches,  a buttercup crown,
alive, a lightning strike, a yellow-dappled
tide, or the colour of heaven’s gate. To
possess it, excrete it. the colour of honey.

turmeric. it is a pollen stain in the throat
of a flower, like being ambushed by love.

Written for Miz Quickly’s Ingredients List Poem prompt. The Image is my own from a buttered chicken recipe (home cook) testing session (prepublication 2020). Shared with @Experimentsinfc #APoemADay and @Miz_on Twitter   ©Misky 2021