Kitchen

by Monica Prince

Don’t ask why so many of my poems about our love take place in the kitchen, why I put a speaker in there but not a plant. The answer is obvious, uninteresting—linoleum is easier to clean. Yes, we cook together, you at the cutting board multiplying servings, me at the sink cleansing your tools to protect our future selves, sated, the rhythm of satisfaction pulsing between us, the itis pushing us out of the kitchen onto the couch. It’s easier to clean the fallen food scraps, water from refilled ice trays, a jagged orgasm shuddered out of me while the rice simmers. Sometimes, I read & you cook: sometimes, I cook & you whisper all the ways you’d dance with me into oblivion, our bodies on repeat as ten galaxies pass us by. When I think of love, I imagine you sweeping the floor before you leave me, entering the back door all flourish & fabulous, late but exuberant, smile infectious & all for me. When I think of love, I think of smuggling our desire for more from the kitchen to the bedroom, unleashing libido like a volcano, the comfort of cotton sheets superior to cold linoleum or leather-backed chairs. When I think of love, I think of my tea already made, breakfast on the stove, your tarot cards divining across the dining table, a good morning singing across your lips meaning I love you meaning we made it meaning I’ve suspended our grief long enough for this meal—yes, I construct a kitchen when I think of love, creator reimagined as cook, as lover, as lifetime.

Monica Prince teaches activist and performance writing and serves as the Director of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University. She’s the author of Roadmap: A Choreopoem, as well as How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem, and Letters from the Other Woman. She can be found online mostly at @poetic_moni. Follow her actions on her website, monicaprince.com.