Poetry Monday
Poetry Monday
Culinary Commandment
By Alejandra Sanchez Alaniz
Everyone will invite you into your home
the vecinos said ‘pasale Rosita’ as she cooked
toritlillas a mano frijoles y salsita
Ever since Grandma could remember
pulling up a stool up to the stove.
Tale telling about her mother Rosaura
a Zacatecana revolucion widow.
The rosary carrying
Santo Nino & San Juan devout
wore invisible adelita bullets across her chest.
La Teflon Dona cooked with a spiced ammunition
walking all the way from Mexico to San Antonio
crossing the border paying un nickle
5 centavos.
Pancho Villa and his men
hung her husband leaving her to seep
in paralyzing grief.
Wasting time is wasting life.
Her hands calloused from
scrubbing floors and shelling pecans.
No job she would’ve turned down,
no time for a nervous breakdown.
Her generational wealth,
the art of cooking
passed down.
A passage into people’s hearts.
A love language so exquisite
it’s epitome of epicurean art.
I abide by her culinary commandments.
Her recipes my mantras memorized,
guiding me by smell and sight. The art of intuitive cooking
is palate love making
without ever touching.