Libby Cudmore's Blog, page 6

All Hail Chicken Breakfast

Pictured: Happiness

Sunday mornings in Binghamton I used to go to Theo’s Southern Style Cuisine, a hole-in-the-wall joint that specialized in fried chicken that would save your goddamn soul.  They did a buffet on Sundays; mashed potatoes so buttery and smooth you could suck them through a curly straw, cobbler made of peaches and dreams, grits in a cauldron and the fried chicken, oh, the fried chicken!  Battered with magic, deep-fried in miracles…when Theo’s closed, it was like a piece of my soul had been ripped out.

But the lesson Theo’s taught me was this: Chicken Breakfast.

Chicken Breakfast isn’t just “oh, I have some leftover KFC, guess I’ll put it on a plate at 10 in the morning,” what are you. some kind of monster?  Chicken Breakfast is an EXPERIENCE, it’s a STATE OF MIND.  You have to give yourself over to Chicken Breakfast and let the spirit of Chicken Breakfast take over your soul.

First, you find the best fried chicken you can.  Maybe this is Kennedy Fried Chicken, maybe it’s Mark Bittman’s recipe, heck, maybe it’s from the grocery store.  It will never be Theo’s, so just give up on ever knowing what perfection tastes like.  Buy the best of What Will Do and throw it in the oven and warm it up.  Chicken Breakfast must be served warm.  

Next, you’re going to need mashed potatoes.  They must be velvety, creamy and have enough butter to choke Paula Deen.

You can have grits, but if you’re like me and don’t especially love them, cornbread is a great alternative.  My husband likes his with strawberry jam.  It is breakfast, after all.

Peach Cobbler is not eaten as a separate piece, like dessert, but rather, on the plate with everything else.  The fruit is what makes it extra breakfast-y.

10:15 is the ideal time for Chicken Breakfast.  Put it all on a chicken plate.  If you don’t have a chicken plate, go get one.  Mine are gingham-print and they’re from the now-defunct Building 19 in Dedham, Mass.  Worth the whole 75 cents I paid for them.

Tuck in.  Savor.  Enjoy your new-found bliss.

Idiot Box: Love In the Time of Rockets

Love in the Time of Rockets

James always had roses and photographs.  I always had schemes and costumes.  We drew maps, swapped clothes and identity, names like the backs of trading cards.  Always one more to catch, another to lose.  He fed the carp in the garden pond; I let the cat inside when it rained.  No man I’ve ever known had eyes as hopelessly big as his.  No woman he ever knew wore skirts as impossibly short as mine.

There are not words for love when hearts are made of silk and helium.  These days we drink tea from cups with broken handles and sing songs we forgot the words to.  For fun, we put on our wedding clothes one last time.  His smile is warmer than any Oklahoma heat wave. 

No one ever wanted us to win, but in whispers and rumor we got a happy ending no one ever predicted.  Roll credits, closing theme.  We’ll meet in again in the next episode.

-Yes, this is a Pokemon-inspired piece.  I was and always will be a Team Rocket fan.

-This poem, the antithesis of “Turning Japanese,” was written as a “we’re cool now” for my ex, Martin because I got very tired of writing sad poems.  By the time I wrote this one, I was starting to wear out on writing about bad romances and wanted to write something that reflected the hope and understanding that, hey, sometimes relationships end, but you can still look back on them fondly.

 

 

 

Idiot Box: ‘Turning Japanese’

Turning Japanese

I was a girl you splashed with water.  He spoke only in signs and subtitles.  We kissed on his bed under a blue and pink horizon of cigarette smoke.  Outside his window there were fireflies.  Inside his walls there were infomercials.  I carried a sword too big for my fragile hands, he drifted aimlessly in space, always out of gas, always out of luck. 

In our cartoon world, we can pull costumes out of back pockets.  In the ordinary world, all the roses he gave me were already half-black. On a melting sidewalk I intertwined our names like DNA.  He only called at 2 a.m. when The Boss couldn’t hear. 

The cat still says his name aloud.  I only have the red half of our locket.  I hold the summer’s last firefly in my hand outstretched.  Really, I say.  Really, it was nothing.

-The first in the “Saturday Morning” series; a lot of anime allusions (including Cowboy Bebop, Ranma 1/2, and Grave of the Fireflies) in this one although it isn’t about any series in particular.

-The last line is a reference to the Smiths, “William, it Was Really Nothing,” making this one-stop shopping for all my teen angst.