I make a list of what there is
to eat in the refrigerator;
what I can make
so very little food goes to waste,
ideally
so no food
goes to waste
because that is what creates the most
greenhouse gases
that contribute to global warming
because we’ve turned sustenance
into poison because
that’s the way capitalism operates,
isn’t it?
And what can I do
to battle big corporations
that spew out chemicals,
turn communities into slaves
who work to be able to buy food
packaged in more chemicals?
I have to do something though, so
I make a list: chicken soup
from two roasted breasts,
meat picked and saved
the skin and bones
boiled with vinegar,
sage and chive salt
to make a broth.
The cold, leftover baked beans.
The olives chopped and mixed with cream cheese
to spread over bagels for breakfast.
Tomorrow: cooked asparagus,
the stock from a second bone boil,
the cooking water from the asparagus,
some onions and garlic:
cream of asparagus soup.
I will boil the woody asparagus ends in more hot water
for another broth,
compost what is inedible.
I will waste nothing.
And next year I will not buy
asparagus, I will plant
lamb’s quarters:
native, nutritious.
I will curl into myself so tightly,
my body becomes a shield
against Monsanto,
against capitalism. Maybe
I can scoop out a piece of
peace for myself.
My children.
—
Loralee Clark is a writer who grew up learning a love for nature and her place in it, in Maine. She resides in Virginia now as a writer and artist. Her Instagram is @make13experiment; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. She has a book forthcoming, Solemnity Rites, with Prolific Pulse Press LLC and has been published most recently in Unearthed, One Art, Choeofpleirn Press, Wingless Dreamer, Heart on Our Sleeves, The Taborian, Superpresent, and Thimble Literary Magazine.
