Food Poetry: Crushed
The intersection of food and poetry is a natural one: both are subjects that concern themselves with experience, memory, sense, and self. Starting this April, during National Poetry Month, we’ve asked some of our favorite poets from around the world to share works that fuse the poetic with the edible. See a gallery of last year’s food poems »
CRUSHED
by Timothy Liu
His hands crushed a lemon
over oysters on the half shell
floating on a bed of ice—
the brinier the better, he said,
malt vinegar and fingers
trumping cocktail sauce or fork—
those lemon halves wrapped
in gauze magnifying
what you kept to yourself—
having no idea how fast
he could slurp a dozen down
before you had the chance
to pick your napkin off the floor.
He left you in a motel room,
the slow leak of the toilet tank
an endless running brook
that would keep you up all night—
Timothy Liu is the author of ten books of poems, including_Don't Go Back To Sleep, forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in the Fall. He lives in Manhattan with his husband._
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