Thursday 16 August 2012

Speak softly and carry a Big Cake by Jacqueline Saphra


 If you’re the kind of mother who likes to beat
children with a big stick, here’s a sweeter
method of control: become a revolutionary
throwback  from the culinary gene pool.

Roll up your sleeves and get domestic:
bake a cake as if they’re going out of fashion.
Conjure with your wooden spoon the yielding
mounds of yellow butter, sugar hills that roll
their shimmer into rivers of golden yolk. Cook.

Then get to grips with the ultimate forcing bag,
go mad with buttercream and pink sprinkles,
consider marzipan, luminous Angelica,
decorative baubles. Let E numbers abound.

Next, why not widen your arena? The city’s full
of back to backs and yet the modern urge
is not to disturb. To hell with that. Take your cake
from door to door. Speak softly as if you were
Avon truly calling. Don’t forget the knife.

There are so many cakeless children fading
on their five-a-day just longing for a fix
of something sweet, they’re bound to let you in,
and once you’re in, let them have it.

Then sit down on your scrubbed front step
in a headscarf as your role dictates,
Quietly lick the bowl, enjoy your tumbler
full of Bombay Sapphire. Remember how
those greedy, sugared-up children danced.

No comments:

Post a Comment