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.