Rachelle Cruz – Poetry
How to Prepare Your Husband for Dinner
San Francisco, California
To braise a heart requires a kind of calm
about cruelty. She wrings out her tears
from a white kerchief, into a pot
that swayed above her head, whistling,
as if caught by a breeze. How the ears
will ease their burning after each fat
lie. How the eyes will steady their hungry
fire on her. No need for the briny bite
of fish sauce or shrimp paste; the tears
and shake of juniper berries are enough.
It’s past midnight, and the water wails
on the stove. Husband will soon come home
stinking of hard work and damp dollars.
How close his bones softening in the broth.
Insatiable suck and chill of marrow. How he’ll
stick, a piece of gristle she’ll tongue for days.
How he’ll sing between her teeth.
Rachelle Cruz is from Hayward, California. She is the author of the chapbook, Self-Portrait as Rumor and Blood (Dancing Girl Press,2012). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in New California Writing 2013 (Heyday Books), the Los Angles Review of Books, Yellow Medicine Review, Jet Fuel Review,The Lit Pub, The Bakery, Stone Highway, The Collagist, Bone Bouquet, PANK Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Splinter Generation, KCET’s Departures Series, Inlandia: A Literary Journey, among others. She hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour on Blog Talk Radio, and is the Podcast Editor at The Collagist. She is a recent recipient of the Manuel G. Flores Scholarship from PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Arists, Inc). An Emerging Voices Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow and a VONA writer, she lives, writes and teaches in Southern California.
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