Episode 129: Chew on This

What's your love language, Slushies? Is it touch, or talk? Recipes or arithmetic? Join us for this episode devoted to poems by Jin Cordaro, whose work strikes an incantatory tone, draws us in, and gets us chewing on the riddles of the human predicament. How do our bodies know things before our minds do? How do other people's shopping lists make us ache for connection? We focus on the art of lists, the arc of poems, and the power of a poet's voice to invite and hold the reader's attention. In post-production we discovered the poem “Flavor in the Hands” was accepted elsewhere. It will appear in Bacopa Literary Review in the future, and we’re delighted for Jin. A link we think you might like: Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Lisa Zerkle, Samantha Neugebauer, and Holly Messitt, as well as our briefly larger than normal tech team Heath Bailey, Jess Fielo, and Vivian Liu (without whom we’d be lost!) At four feet seven inches, Jin Cordaro believes she holds the record for most petite living poet. Having had twins, she also believes she holds the record for most times people have asked, “They came from you?” Her work has appeared in The Sun, Faultline, Smartish Pace, and Bacopa Literary Review, and has been featured on the podcast The Slowdown. She and her family live in central New Jersey. That Time You Stole Someone’s Shopping Cart With their shopping list in the seat, and a flower doodled in the corner – a sign not a curse or a prayer, a devotion, a singular language to nourish and be nourished. Familiar words, combined in a cipher, you can only translate every third word – paprika followed by shallots means to put effort or caring. Cranberries combined with pecans and butternut squash means to sustain, keep well. What would this taste like? This list a thin opaque crepe filled with the soft, oozing breadth of someone’s attention and time. You slip it into your jacket keep your hand on your pocket as you walk the store. Rush home to unfold it, imagine it still warm, slightly browned on a skillet, sweet and bready with love. You chew it slowly – the only piece of food to be found. The Sum of One 1/3 parent + 1/3 employee + 1/3 spouse does not equal 1 whole you but permutations of you. Only one can execute its function at any given time. Requirements call for 1 ½ parent you + 1 ½ work you + 1 ½ spouse you = invalid calculation. Insufficient source. Multiply by a factor of school concert x illness x hosting holiday = exponentially negative integer you. Divide this number by the number of your children, given age as a factor of x. Write a proof that demonstrates 1 you – job + bills = increase in sanity? Or 1/3 parent you – cleaning toilets – cooking = increase in you? You are the product of division. You ÷ x = disappearing you reduced to null an imaginary unit when all you want is to be prime divisible by only 1 and yourself. But 0 too can be divided by any number and still remain the same