When Baking Angel Food Cake
A poem by Lana Hechtman Ayers

When Baking Angel Food Cake

It is not necessary
to be grieving
but it can be helpful
to whisk the egg whites
to utter stiffness,
apply muscle and might,
smoosh and whir
with surgical intention,
as if on a mission
to excise death
from the mixing bowl,
excise death from
the kitchen of your life
that is the center
of nourishment,
excise death not from
memory, no, but from
one’s palette, one’s senses,
so that after the cake
rises in the oven,
angel food that it is,
the beloved’s name
melts on the tongue
with each ecstatic taste.

About the Author:

Lana Hechtman Ayers has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Escape Into Life, Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. Lana’s ninth collection, The Autobiography of Rain, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Her favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Say hello at LanaAyers.com.

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