Making Love in a Greek Kitchen

It’s always time for olive oil. They drink it here. I’m feeling your spinach melt in the pan like green candy, like roughage that doesn’t cut its way into your stomach. It needs pasta or rice & scallions –both the white & green parts--& tomatoes, always tomatoes with their sweet delicious lips. This is time for more oil, Greek & viscous, love juice. Split some baby artichokes in half & lemon, zest with flesh, waste nothing but the seeds. Some feta and a kiss of salt, some fresh ground pepper, just enough that you know what it is, not enough to skew the flavor of the dish. Bring it to a gentle boil, simmer like lovers lying in bed. They know when it’s ready, when they dance into the kitchen and cut a loaf of bread into thick crusty slices. Never forget the wine. Never ever do that. 

John Dorroh travels as often as possible. He inevitably ends up in other peoples’ kitchens exchanging culinary tidbits and telling tall tales. Once he baked bread with Austrian monks and drank a healthy portion of their beer. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 journals, including Feral, North of Oxford, River Heron, Wisconsin Review, Kissing Dynamite, and El Portal. He had two chapbooks published in 2022. He lives in rural Illinois, USA, near St. Louis.