Sunday 20 March 2011

Sestina Day 7: Secret Recipe

It's been one week, to quote Barenaked Ladies, and I'm enjoying this more than can possibly be normal.
Today's poem is for my lovely sister Jude, whose chosen keywords can be found in her comment on yesterday's post.
Keep the suggestions coming!

Secret Recipe

To make the perfect juicy hamburger
Requires a high degree of artistry
I keep a secret blend of seventeen
Exotic herbs, wrapped in a handkerchief.
To bind the mince, I use one free range egg.
The end result is always quickly
gobbled.

Before I found that recipe I gobbled
All kinds of mediocre hamburger,
Often made up of offal, salt and egg,
You can't disguise bad food with artistry:
They made me retch into my handkerchief
Until one day when I was seventeen

(I can't believe I was just seventeen),
When sitting in a greasy spoon, I gobbled
A meal that made me raise my handkerchief
Up to my eyes because that hamburger
Caused me to weep at such fine artistry.
That perfect match of beef and herbs and egg.

(Too many chefs forget about the egg)
The radio was on: East 17
were playing with their usual artistry.
And as the other patrons sat and gobbled,
I asked the chef about the hamburger.
He wiped his hands upon a handkerchief

- A nasty, greasy, filthy handkerchief -
And said "Why should I tell some posh young egg-
Head how to make my secret hamburger?
You must be young: what sixteen? Seventeen?
Since when have teenagers cared what they gobbled?
But you, you really get my artistry!

Not many recognise such artistry."
He said, and wept into his handkerchief
"For years I've seen my gourmet artworks gobbled
Along with beans and sausage, chips and egg."
And so, although I was just seventeen,
He taught me how to make the hamburger.

What you've just gobbled takes great artistry,
Good steak minced fine, A handkerchief
Of herbs, an egg, and luck when seventeen.

2 comments:

Riot Kitty said...

So how is it you don't post for nearly a year and then we get an every day treat? :)

Jude Claybourne said...

This is ace!