Angel Hair

[ChristopherSea]

Il Cuoco

As yolk soaks into flour,
dough blooms from enriched grain
cupped in his powdered palms.

Fingers, caked with the bones of pasta,
shaped the skeleton—round on the butcher block
counter, flat under the rolling pin,

as fire hums blues to stainless steel;
a guttural, throaty vibrato whispered into steam.
Capellini is born under a bad sign,

a knife’s gentle kiss
separating each thin strand
of angel’s hair from the mass

before the boiling pot froths
under the weight of creation
stirring in its stomach.

Geoff,
I am now craving pasta at 8 am in the morning. Thanks a lot! I think that I have heard of this Italian restaurant before. There are some great lines and ideas herein. I love the blues metaphor/'born under a bad sign' reference' as The Cream's version is my favorite one for the song. The same goes for the Angel hair and stomach metaphors. As for critique, you may not need 'as' or 'his' in your first stanza. I don't really have any problems with the lines carrying across stanzas. If you read Poetry Magazine, this appears to be the favored form, especially with three line stanza formats. In stanza two, I want to say skeletal rounds without the caesura, does that make sense? In stanza three, could you make a choice between guttural or throaty? Although guttural implies pharyngeal, it derives from the Latin for throat and therefore nearly synonymous. Hopefully, some things to think about for your next edit./Chris