In this poem, a son writes to his parents and invites them to a meal, letting them know that his boyfriend will also be there. He gives instruction to his parents on how they should behave, parenting his parents. In all this family tension, the boyfriend’s question “What’s in that recipe again?” offers calm, and builds lines of connection that had otherwise seemed unlikely.
Chen Chen – is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry and won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Thomas Lux — Refrigerator, 1957
Rita Wong — flush
Maria Dahvana Headley — Beowulf
Michael Klein — Swale
Ray Young Bear — Our Bird Aegis
Suji Kwock Kim — Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border
Amber McBride — ROLL CALL: NEW TAROT NAMES FOR BLACK GIRLS
Carl Dennis — Breath
Elisa Gonzalez — To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self
Ofelia Zepeda — Deer Dance Exhibition
Sandra Cisneros — When in Doubt
Kandace Siobhan Walker — Three Mangoes, £1
Francisco Aragón — Asleep You Become a Continent
Conor Kerr — Winter Songs
Valencia Robin — The Coup
Eugenia Leigh — How the Dung Beetle Finds Its Way Home
Poetry Unbound — Season 8 Trailer
Clint Smith with Krista Tippett — What We Know in the "Marrow of Our Bones"
BONUS: Truth-seeking and the Symphony of Language with Henri Cole
BONUS: Making Space for the Erotic with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
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