Critiques of Food

Ronald Donn

Critique of Bread

       --series in tone of Russell Edson's "Fire is Not a Nice Guest"

Take look at bread. Take a GOOD, hard look at it. Bread is a nice guest, she said, and she suggests we wait and see what's coming next. The knife, of course, the knife. The knife to the bread, she punctuates, rolling her b's. Bread is a nice guest as a sandwich. Bread takes well to stacking. For this, bread passes every test except the one that requires dressing. Bread will not dress, not for me, not for you. For this reason, when bread dies, it remains as it is: lonely, a little white, required of me. Or

                          Bread = White/Soul
                                  (over)
                               Night Time
~~~~

Critique of Bacon

Bacon got too much humour. I laugh, you laugh when bacon fries. O how we laugh at the pan
and the sound of a sizzle when mother calls us down out of beds and we gather around a large iron skillet, and stare inside. The rectangle whither, and Father says we whither, and we tell him withering is not for me, or me, Father, not wither! Father has too much to say. He says we steal every word from Mother, and we say Dad, watch the bacon. The bacon gets smaller. The edges of the kitchen get browner. You might say even black. This is how we--me, Sister, Brother, Uncle, Mother, Father, Dearest--feel safest. Or:

    Bacon (divided by) Dearest Safety = Mother +
    Father + Sister +  Brother + Uncle+ I

~~~~~

Eggs Have Come Home to Us

Now, precisely, when an egg will tumble and the saddest people will not feel it, there's a little curve that occurs in my time asleep.  No, this will not do. One man lets out a horrible, peep! but that won't change either the sadness in our world and our world's tremendous sense of getting things all askew. Waking up, for example, is the best time to understand it: an egg must come home to us.

When an egg will come home to us it'll be like any other day, only we have a need to dress different. Or, when some egg will come home to us there's a different pet in the kitchen, under the stove as she always has been, sniffing the roach bait.

Perhaps then we'll have know that this particularly different pet, who is only one example, will
have gobbled the roach bait but that will have never bothered us again when an egg will come home to us. Not to create an unnecessary illusion of safety, no, the different pet will die from eating the roach bait, but we'll be dressed differently, we won't know that pet; an egg will come home to us.

Or:

   An egg will come home to us| = deceased,
   different pet softly beneath stove
 
 

Ronald Donn