Building and Shaking

Haley Jenkins

Building a meal, from pasta tubes and ham chunks,
seizing the blue and pink single-eyed
shaker, I throw a jet of salt over the air
above the steam, released from underground.

Caressing it, I think of Nana who collected
so much china her spine grew shatterable
all her pans growing into slick fat frames
our Grandad never shielded with silver dresses.

No man can build a bird’s nest, a woman
spends hours spitting and mud larking, strikes
car boots for love to fill a city room, building
up shelter to keep from breaking and inhabit
what will not survive them.

Dumpy, our bodies were builders, shakers, each pouring
herself into mouths singing flavour into the food
handed down from the women who sung themselves
into the thick gravy, golden cakes and forgot
to reserve salt for their emptying tongues

that spent hours every day convincing their hearts
to be colanders, letting it all shift through and trickling
away to dark corners of the kitchen where it wept
in watery mass for the salted sea.