Fine Dining

by Dianne Garcia, Ida Freilinger, Amelia Fielden, and Michael Dylan Welch

First published in Red Lights 10:1, January 2014, page 63. Also published in Amelia Fielden’s book, Conversations in Tanka (Port Adelaide, Australia: Ginninderra Press, 2014). Written 10 April 2013 at the Lake Forest Park Library in Lake Forest Park, Washington, on the theme of food and drink. See also “So Much Rain.”

holiday turkey:

Mother’s prized recipe

missing—

our fragile memories

add too much salt Dianne Garcia

I linger over

a glass of white zin,

toss the salad

in two minutes

with a caesar kit Ida Freilinger

my daughter

produces a key lime pie—

I laugh alone

evidently no one else

has seen that movie Amelia Fielden

shopping bags

from the grocery store

stacked on the kitchen table—

the weight of your call

saying you’re not coming Michael Dylan Welch