From Beyond the Cake by Jude Cowan Montague

Genoa Cake: No, do you?

He copied jokes and doodled

beside his wife’s recipes.

Marjorie and their children

popped up on the bottom

of shopping lists, butter,

tea, sugar and half an eye,

(page torn here)

enhancing instructions

with not quite half a pint

of the departed.

Macaroon Tartlets,

Paisley Jam Sandwich No. 2 for 8 persons,

Fereneze Cakes, time 1 hr,

Bristol and Cocoanut Cake.

In a mottled cutting,

folded, brittle as brandy snaps,

flattened in the front of her book,

a second recipe lurks,

from a talk by Miss Guy

(another Marjorie) on August 20 (193?),

for Manchester Macaroon Tartlets.


Jude Cowan Montague's 'For the Messengers' is on Donut Press www.forthemessengers.com and a forthcoming collection 'The Groodoyals of Terre Rouge' will be on Dark Windows Press.