As a journalist earlier and a scholar later, I have been reflecting about how to best write about food, especially when I am not developing arguments or explaining facts. How can words convey the sensory or emotional elements that shape our eating experiences and cannot be easily described or defined in neat categories or ideas? That’s why I have been dabbling in poetry, without any pretension to be a poet or aspiration to become one. Here is what came out. Call it an experiment in communication.

As a journalist earlier and a scholar later, I have been reflecting about how to best write about food, especially when I am not developing arguments or explaining facts. How can words convey the sensory or emotional elements that shape our eating experiences and that cannot be easily described or defined in neat categories or ideas? As I have been working at the intersection of design and food, I have been increasingly focusing on objects in their unadulterated,wordless, thoughtless, emotionless “thingness.” Yet, they somehow have agency, in the sense that they have effects on our behaviors, generating feelings, actions, and reactions in us and influencing attitudes and decisions. As designers know very well, things evoke forms of embodied knowledge and performance that are not necessarily discursive but cause intellectual and impassioned ripples. They train human bodies to move and locate themselves in space in particular ways, and to execute automatic gestures that can be quite outside of voluntary control. Yet, at times it feels as though things and their interactions with us resist to be translated into words. A challenge, for a writer.

I have struggled to express how the material qualities of what we ingest – smells, textures, mouthfeel, flavors –  generate affect and color our physical and pre-verbal awareness of ingestion, if any such dimension actually exists. Systematic research is expanding in these fields, as they are quite important for economic sectors ranging from hospitality to food manufacturing. Such studies measure, dissect, quantify. However, I wanted to try another approach, leaving behind my academic methodologies and allowing feelings and sensations to take over and guide my writing. That’s why I have been dabbling in poetry, without any pretension to be a poet or aspiration to become one. Here is what came out. You can call it an experiment.

Mole Negro
What does it take for food to taste smoky?
I mean, besides the obvious.
Not smoked, but smoky.
Who invests care and patience
to impart a fleeting flavor
to what we obliterate in few quick bites?
Even if they are paid
and no grandmother is crucifying herself
on the altar of a stove
or a fire pit,
what is the price of attention,
of precision?
What is the value of averting an avalanche
of burnt scents,
unless a slight char
is the desired effect?
What skills need to be honed?
How do you teach a body,
a nose,
to recognize that precise point,
just right,
between perfection and failure?
What do eyes, ears, and skin
contribute to the endeavor?
Certainly the tongue
gets to rest
until it is time to test
the final result.
No second thoughts,
no uncertainties,
no backpedaling.
An instant to register
the imminent scorching.
Just that instant,
while the mouth is ready to judge,
and not only with words.
Unnerving:
an art  – or rather a proud craft – without duration.

Chiles
My tamarind frozen margarita
comes with a thorny crown
of crushed,
crumbly,
orange chili pepper.
A dusting, enough
to perk me out.
It feels familiar
from somewhere,
some other time.
My forehead sweats,
my breath runs shallow..
A bright costellation
of tangy, smoky,
herbal, rounded,
spiky, soothing notes
(notes? Jesus!!)
beckons me.
No nomenclature,
no reassuring classifications.
Smells,
gestures,
echos
will have to do, this time.
My palate is limited
in Mesoamerican matters:
it admits defeat
gleefully.
Back to boozing.

Stew blues
Day in, day out,
another dinner,
another dish to make.
It’s not that I am bored,
but it’s getting cold outside,
and the kitchen will soon smell of comfort.
I have shopped
carefully.
All the ingredients
are already in the pantry,
neatly stored.
Only some condiments are missing
to turn these staples into a bowl of pleasure.
I must have misplaced
the required spice.
Maybe I left it elsewhere,
for other cooks to enjoy.
I wish I could get it back,
or at least some of it.
I could use it right now.
A good dose
would give a different flavor
to what’s simmering in the pot.
I am all for strong aromas:
I have never been scared of boldness.
If only I could remember
how to season.
I’ll keep on stirring,
I won’t get tired.
It will all get back to me,
eventually,
and it will taste transcendent.

Chanterelles
The skill of cheating time
out of decay
(its favorite prize, apparently)
is honed and pasteurized
in vinegar and jars
for meals to come,
for stories to be shared.
As hard as it may try,
this fall won’t turn into winter.

In the fridge
Blue cheese may end up getting bluer,
pungent, stickier,
furrier even.
Its tendrils are going to reach
softening eggplants,
stiff tortillas,
sulfurous eggs,
around small jars of pickles
and bright-hued bottled sauces.
An ambush lurking
in fluorescent light.
Time works overtime
to putrefy domestic bliss
and smash leftover nurture.
A fortress of chilled food,
strategically poised,
will guard you till I am back,
to shop and cook again
and feast with you.
We’ll think about the dirty dishes,
later.

A Toast
Another glass, my friend,
Just one more sip of wine.
Sharp drops of past,
raw scraps of future:
we’ll wipe them off our lips
with thirsty tongues
and burning fingers.
We’ll fling them in the air
then watch them fall
like flakes of snow.
Melting,
they’ll soak our words and strip them
of pointless sounds:
glimpses of certainty.