Joy of Cooking
(a found poem)
No housewife knows when she will answer
a knock at the kitchen door and be suddenly faced
with a neighbor’s surplus catch.
This need not be a moment of consternation.
To test freshness, make sure that its eyes
are bulging and its gills are reddish,
that the scales have a high sheen
and are adhering firmly. Spread
on a work surface several layers
of newsprint covered with three thicknesses
of brown paper. Wash briefly in cold water;
scales are more easily removed when wet.
Grasp firmly near the base of the tail
and press a rigid sharp blade at a slight
angle from the vertical position. Work
against the nap, up towards the head.
Then cut the entire length of the belly
from vent to head and remove the entrails.
They are all contained in a pouchlike
integument easily freed from the flesh,
so evisceration need not be a messy job.
Now cut around the pelvic and ventral fins.
Cut above the collarbone and snap the head,
breaking through the backbone. The pectoral
fins should come off with the head. Slice through
the tail. Wash in cold running water to remove
any traces of blood, viscera, or membrane.
Kim Roberts is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023). She is editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program as the book that “best illuminates important aspects” of the culture of Washington, DC. For 20years, she edited the literary journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and since 2010 she has co-curated the web exhibit, DC Writers’ Homes, with Dan Vera. Roberts is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). In 2023, she was one of five Pride Poets-in-Residence at the Arts Club of Washington, and was chosen for the inaugural cohort of nine Individual Practitioners in the Humanities, awarded by Humanities DC. See www.kimroberts.org.
“My copy of The Joy of Cooking has been passed down to me through multiple hands. It belonged to my dear friend Martha’s aunt, who bequeathed it to her—and then it became mine after Martha passed away. My copy of the book is dogeared and stained on several pages, and the spine has broken—all reminders of the matriarchal line of women in kitchens who came before me. Although many of the recipes are outdated (farina balls Cockaigne, anyone? Perhaps some tongue in aspic?), still I love the book. I will never get rid of it.”