​Kosher - Rikki Santer

Her mother brought it with her
from across the ocean.  Ancestry,
the mouth said to the kitchen.
Architect your space, so she did again
in her rust belt home. Later my mother
tried for awhile in her newlywed bungalow.
Filled the soup pot from the waterfall deep
in Lithuanian forests, segregated foodware
chipped by lineage of duty, revered
a tattered cookbook—midrash with
grandmother marginalia in Yiddish.
 
Then her ranch home in the suburbs along
with the chaos of American children.
Salted memory of loin, heart, warm snout--
slipped fast by knife glinted in science
of slaughter. The kosher butcher with little
paper boats mounded with raw hamburger
so fresh it tasted like sweet copper. Slippery
chicken livers sliding into the maw
of her meat grinder that she cranked
to the lyrics of showtunes. Eventually
breakfasts of pop tarts and bacon
in months populated by TV dinners. 
 
Now it’s Sunday in my kitchen
and as close as I get is a box
of kosher salt in the cupboard
and a tub of vegan butter in the fridge.
Sunlight curls over Mother’s 1947
The Settlement Cook Book
(The way to a man’s heart)
with fingerprint stains and ingredient
spatterings, all alphabet of her trying on
the mantle of homemaker. And tucked
between pages, handwritten recipes
in her signature purple ink, evidence
of her domestic invention. So tonight
will be her spice cake drunk on
Manischewitz from the year
she added it to everything--
her sultry meatloaf, her funny fish balls,
her lunchbox sandwiches gobsmacked,
one third peanut butter, two thirds grape jelly
tipsy with wine.