James Sixth and First by Sean Jones

"that which hath so bound and firmely knit the hearts of all 
your MAJESTIES loyall and Religious people unto you, that
your very Name is precious among them, their eye doeth
behold you with comfort, and they blesse you in their hearts"              
 - dedication in the King James Bible.

Great and manifold 

rough puff (bread Sovereign)

thick, and palpable

clouds of butter

cannot overshadow your MAJESTY

A fall to the ground

not suffered, rather

taken up.

In your chiffon king

of Great Britain, Ireland &c.

Tranquil peace at home

and abroad.

French fancies

the heavenly hand enriched

far and near to 

urge and excite

humble craving.

Into the English tongue

the fruit thereof

extends itself

hammered on their anvil

of deep judgement, apprehended.

Mary, Paul (Popish persons)

will malign us.

Such importance might justly require

ill meaning, discontent.

Their contentment does not

diminish or decay

vehement desire perpetuated.

Happiness, true felicity.

The eye beholds you with comfort

Immediate author of our happiness

more and more kindled.

Do not go backward, slack

though Sun in his strength

dwindled

to supposed and surmised mists.

Comfort Food by Jill Abram

To show her love, she liked to bake.
Her sons ate three hot meals a day.
Her lover liked a chocolate cake,

so healthy lunches, for his sake,
she served up promptly at midday.
To show her love, she liked to bake.

Her speciality was strawberry shortcake
whenever she had guests to stay.
Her lover liked a chocolate cake.

With all those sweet things, toothache
was a threat she must allay.
To show her love, she liked to bake.

She knew well how to grill a steak
to perfection, just the way
Her lover liked.  A chocolate cake

for pudding she would make
to keep him home, that old roué.
To show her love, she liked to bake,
Her lover liked a chocolate cake.


Jill Abram has 3 poems published in Ariadne's Thread issue 3 which is available at www.ariadnethread.net

Obsession by Helen Lederer

A cake once seen in shadows thrown

By sunlight on my counter clean,

Was ‘disappeared’ by hands unknown

And taken to a foreign scene.

No larder this, or biscuit tin

Played host to baked and loved up carbs,

Instead some hands of spite and sin

Did take my cake to other parts.

I saw the man, whose mouth of crumbs

Did prove his pleasure at my cake,

And I with fingers and two thumbs

Did shame this cake thief with a shake,

Instead of shame the cake thief shouted

‘Am off the diet – I am delighted.’

Helen Lederer is an actress, comedian and writer. She's possibly best known for her role as the dippy Catriona in the absolutely fabulous Absolutely Fabulous.

Sonnet Review: The Great British Bake Off, BBC Two, Tuesday 4 September, by Simon Moore

So Stuart goes, as expected since week one,

From the imprecision of his Union Flag on,

He never seemed as up to speed as John,

Danny or Brendan, as he went along

Becoming ever more prone to disaster,

The limp bake, the missing taste, careless,

Till Berry flipped her terrible temper

At the death, quiet scorn heaped on meringue mess.

It crept: the fear of an ‘X-Factor’ freak,

The Wagner dragged through for ridicule;

Had unsavoury talent-show tics leached

To sour this gentlest of the genre, to Fool

The man? Victoria went, I feared the worst,

& worser still, ’pon another’s outburst.

Simon Moore writes Sonnet Reviews (sonnetreviews.tumblr.com), the world's leading 14 line rhyming review portal.

Editors' note: There's been a slight delay in getting this poem online, but it's still nice to reminisce about Bake-Off episodes past. Ah, remember that Union Flag cake gone wrong?

How do I love thee? by S Crooks

my baking heart

How do I love thee? Let me count the pastries.

I love thee to the millilitre and kilo and ounce my measuring scales can reach, when feeling a bit peckish.

For the ends of the shortbread supply and brownie tin.

I love thee to the level of a heaped tablespoon, or filled cup.

I love thee fervently as women crave chocolate,

I love thee softly as men sift flour,

I love thee with a passion for all things baking,

In my tentative showstoppers and childhood favourites,

I love thee with a zeal for pastry lattices and lemon and ginger millefeuilles. 

I love thee with mini rhubarb cheescakes and freshly grated nutmeg, and if we so choose,

I shall but love thee better after dessert time. 

Cooking With Marilyn by Angela Readman

And then I catch you, baking after midnight again,

mushrooming flour a nuclear cloud in your hair.

Elbow deep, you dive into a chipped bowl

to try on useful hands, fingertips dusted for prints

of mothers all over America making dinner

from the leftovers of their dreams.

There are so many snowmen you haven’t made,

standing on the hillsides of imagined lives women

in floral aprons salt away. This is it, this is the loaf

to save our lives, the one to show me how a wife looks.

Sweat on your lip, the condensation of a smile, you grab,

release, clutch and let go. Tongue in teeth, knead,

need the way you know men dream of working a breast.

I wait to be touched by floury thumbs. And you wait,

for the rise or fall, the moon at the bare window folded in,

again, the crescent of your ring cutting dough to heal like scar.

Angela Readman is a poet and short story writer. Her poetry collection Strip was published by Salt.

A Plain Cook's Prayer by Kathy Pimlott

Deliver me from cakes who could do

with pulling themselves together –

torte, glossy, but with anxious leanings;

pavlova, whimsical and brittle.

Give me at teatime a Victoria,

smugly  glorious on its doily,

a stoical date and walnut,

a valiant  take-me- as-you-find me bun.

Let a lemon drizzle save me

from the melancholy of éclairs,

savarin’s wild despair, the quiet disdain

of violet macaroons.

O cakes of England,

rise and comfort me.

Cake by Wayne Holloway-Smith

Wayne's pocket book Beloved, in case you've been wondering is published by Donut Press.

I Like Cake by Katy Lanceley

I like cake,

but I cannot bake.

I buy it or it’s given,

In a box, wrapped in ribbon.

Make no mistake,

I like cake.

Philosophy of Cake by David Clarke

So, Plato reckoned all cake
the image of cake’s idea –
the ur-cake, cake’s essence was echoed
in every humble sponge, each fancy

eased from milky parchment,
and in all those ramparts of mid-
European kirsch and cream,
the balls of choux spritzed fat

with crème patissière. And so
I slice and bite again and again
in hope of tasting what cake is
in truth, the sweetness of that truth,

its give and clag between the teeth,
but find my hunger still unstilled,
my ideal portion yet unserved.



David Clarke's pamphlet Gaud is available from Flarestack Poets. He blogs at http://athingforpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/

Soggy Bottom by Rishi Dastidar

Entering the kitchen with an Ocado haze,

a Nigella recipe and the best intentions,
I adopt a determined culinary gaze
to begin the creation of this confection.
Sugar, flour play nicely; a flick of the whisk;
eggs slop in easily – this is all low risk.
My mix is smoother than a seducer’s patter.

Time to introduce tin to Mr Handsome Batter.
Fruit touches on top, and oven on –
but it’s while twirling the piping bag
Berry’s baking conscience starts to nag.
I look. A collapse. Cake gone wrong.
All I’m left with is wreckage, a soggy bottom.
Domestic God status? File under forgotten.

Mis-bake by Amy Ekins

I made a mistake.

Not one of those – mistook the salt for sugar
kind of mistakes, or – oops, the oven isn’t on
kinds either.

The mistake was to bake in the first place.

I measured out the ingredients as I mixed together thoughts
of your face, of your response
to my sugar-spun irises, smiling at you
from over a gateaux – no

I should never have stepped
out of obscurity and into the kitchen, covering
my countertops in cocoa, contemplating your kiss.

I presented it to you on a floral plate, too late
to take it back, to un-bake the offering
of the edible, and the inedible (that being myself).

The break-room was silent, as you stepped back three paces,
declared an allergy to dairy, and dashed, spilling tea from your tray as you went.

It was a weekend misspent, changing Miss to Mrs on stray envelopes,
a thought mis-baked, in an over-heated studio, in which the only contestant
is you.

Cocoa by Rowena Knight

We’d agreed the shallow sweetness

of milk chocolate didn’t satisfy, that we needed

a bitter flavour barely tempered by sugar,

a chocolate that bit back.

Tonight you release the yellow moons of potatoes

from their skins. I listen to the shiver of lentils

sieved through fingers. Cool as beads.

I weigh flour, measure sugar.

Without thinking I touch a cocoa-powdered finger

to my skin. Later you will lick clean

the bowl of my neck,

and I will bite back, learn your flavour.

It will not be akin to milk or sugar.

Clown Burial in Winter by DA Powell

meringue icing beaten over hot water, ruffle-edged
and the occasional rosette atop an otherwise vanilla
sheet cake boxed in paraffined cardboard, raffia-tied:

maybe we can squint the midget into pastry, instead
of the polymer resin rectangular planter, impervious
to drought (unlike its plumes of maiden grass, gone dead

despite the youthful fuzz and tolerance to neglect)
that’s one way to abide the loss.   or change the japer
to a swan:  pallid jewel set in the mind’s frozen lake

just long enough to dip its beak — sheepstorm imminent,
cloudbank chattering diminished pinhead chatter    —
what madness drew this little man’s painted grimace:

down-turned mouth on whiteface.   his droopy drawers
canvas the landscape.   a band of tin whistles plays
pop the balloons. it’s a fine serenade.   burst of applause



DA Powell is an American poet and teacher. This poem was first published in Jacket 33. His latest collection is Chronic from Graywolf Press. 

Piece of Cake by Sophie Mayer

1.

yes, that moment when

the page and all its

silver shakings come

together. oh, icing on

is white, is indentable

for decoration. stars,

stars, and flowers, oh

my sweet sky, how 

you sparkle. 

2.

how much can it change

and still be? raw, sprouted,

free from. But still the crunch

of sweetness, still 

the – bite into it – elation.

3.

if I read another 100 pages then 

I can — if I finish this paragraph

then tea – if you are also at the library

then shall we — if the review is done

I’ve earned it. If I’ve eaten the cake,

then sugar is what powers — and our

conversation is the — the precise

swirl of buttercream, that — in this essay I 

read the words scattered in poppyseeds.

http://www.sophiemayer.net

My low maintenance making holds no truck with baking by Sarah Wishart

My low maintenance making holds no truck with baking

I am

an

artist.

I have never enthused for the intellectual restraints of

measuring cups

or

spoons.

And this despite the certainty that riffing on the weighing scales doesn’t pay out:

my friend,

also an artist

plays hard and fast with the rules,

and his cakes are as dense as a collapsed star.

In by-gone times I’ve slithered into an apron,

sucked my chocolate-laced fingers in the mist of an open fridge,

sifted icing sugar provocatively

a skein of moisture on my lip as I triumphantly pulled

ginger bread from the oven.

Like others before me intermittently confusing domesticity with sex.

But when I think of you, there are no plans for baking.

No musings on what sweet stuff might cloy your mouth.

I want your tongue free

to talk to me.

So that rivers of easy laughter might flow.

I shall not dam your imagination with butter and flour.

I will not make cake.

www.sarahwishart.co.uk 

No picnic by Michael Harris Conroy

we go for a walk in the park
and it’s no walk in the park.

we take oysters and fine wines
into enchanted woods
but even that’s no fucking picnic.

if music be the food of love, then honey,
someone’s switched the tapes
and industrial noises serenade us
as we feast on sour grapes.

“you should get a job with the u.n.
you’re so good at giving ultimata”.
"yeah, well you should be a weatherman,
you’re choc-full of bullshit data’’.

just when we think we’ve cleared the air
someone revs up a hidden tank
and a love-hate shell explodes and spits 
a ton of sand where my heart just sank.

just when we think the sun is rising
a nuclear reactor cracks and leaks
and shadows mug us,
like slick ninja,
and ‘i don’t care’
and you won’t speak.

it doesn’t matter how we mix
the mixture or how well we bake,
we could dust with this thing
with shit or sugar
– it’ll never be a piece of cake.

This poem, by Michael Harris Conroy is from his forthcoming collection 'Easy Rhymes a.k.a' and can be found on 'Royal Shit' by Superqueens. 

Cake is your friend (photo courtesy of Kathryn Lewis)

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.

TOMATO BOY! by Ray Morgan

It gives no joy;
your tomato layer,
oh Tomato Boy.
Tomato and ginger
should never be married,
no wonder your expression
is looking quite harried.