This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
February 14 is Valentine’s Day. Come Saturday, some will celebrate their loved ones with roses, cards, or even romantic sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning or William Shakespeare. Others emphatically will not! For those not too keen on the heart holiday, today’s poem, “Saffron” by Jessica Manack, is a sonnet for that someone you once thought you loved, but now are convinced you were sorely mistaken.
Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh's North Side. Her writing has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, and she has been the recipient of a Curious Creators Grant and Getaway Artist Fellowship. As the winner of the 2023 First Chapbook Prize, her poetry collection, "Gastromythology" was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2024. Keep up with her work at: http://www.jessicamanack.com
“O, my Luve is like a red, red rose,” famously claimed the Scottish poet Robert Burns. But what if your love is “yellow-bellied,” no longer your love, and more like a “boiled stone” than roses? If so, have I got the sonnet for you. It might even make you hungry.
Here’s “Saffron” by Jessica Manack.
Saffron
You seemed a sandwich (ham), easy to love (not tricky
to devour), familiar with a little zip: clump of mustard,
lip of Swiss. Or peanut butter, maybe—something rib-sticky,
hearty, thick. Yes, the heaves and the jiggles of custard,
bread heady with yeast, crust yielding to sweet porous meat,
made me think of you. As did steaming spaghetti,
a puzzle, a mass to unravel, a source of joy and heat.
Put another way: I thought you'd sustain me.
But no, you’ve failed me so; what aliment is this?
I eat five times a day, by rote, am never filled.
For you are merely chicken broth, the tang of boiled stone,
brackish and translucent; flavor's gravestone, vigor's piss.
Yes, you are instant saffron rice: starchy, vaguely brill-
iant, and yellow, yellow, yellow: yellow-bellied, yellow-boned.
That was “Saffron” by Jessica Manack.
The poem was originally published in Dinner Bell, a Pittsburgh-based magazine that publishes stories about food that exist outside of the traditional food writing framework. It also appears in her collection, "Gastromythology."
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
