Today's poem

The poet Jennifer Wong living in London recommended this poem. So lovely cooking poem. Sweet peppers are flouncing, sometimes dancing with 3 beats. See firecrackers and fireworks on an iron frying pan. Leap to Gastronomía del País Vasco. Ready for sherry? Sure, Osborne sherry. Thank you to both the poets Martha Sprackland and Jennifer Wong.

Pimientos de Padrón by Martha Sprackland

Os pementos de Padrón
uns pican e outros non
A plateful of dark green bullets
slick in their lake of grassy blood
and charred from the fire,
still hissing and settling, smoking,
the skin lifting and curling
studded with salt-flakes.
They were our cheap roulette – some hot,
others not (the capsicum is brewed
by the sudden sun at summer’s edge).
We were all of us bad at decisions,
lovesick, shamed or fleeing
or brisant and in shock. The city emptied
as the madrile.os boarded up
the bodegas and rippled out
towards the cooler coasts
leaving us to our own boiling ghosts,
reckless enough to hold
the dare to our mouths, fire
or sweetness spreading across the tongue
and then head to the airport
for the first flight anywhere but home.

(from website of Liverpool University Press)

(Sweet peppers: 甘唐辛子)