How to Cook Dinner Today

In the bag are 17 kinds of dried beans
and a foil packet labeled “Ham Flavoring.”
Throw the packet in the trash. Put the beans
in the slow cooker with broth, onion,
garlic, thyme. Now, between here

and dinner, you’ve got time. For what? Work
you get paid for? Work you should find? The line
crossed in Ukraine? Those fear-voices?
Has it ever been wise to have

bean soup much on your mind, or to write
about what’s for dinner? Even on a day nobody
starts a war?

For now, think of a child who wants
to bite into a whole apple but whose
teeth can’t open wide enough. The angles
are all wrong; it’s like trying to
eat a bite out of a wall. Today
the world’s an impossible
overgrown apple, and cooking
this food that tastes good and is
warm and needs so little time
is the one ragged bite you can take.

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Carolyn Williams-Noren's poems and lyric essays have been in AGNI, Boxcar Poetry Review, Gigantic Sequins, Willow Springs, and Sugar House Review. She also has two poetry chapbooks: F L I G H T S (2020, Ethel Zine & Press) and Small Like a Tooth (2015, Dancing Girl Press). She cooks dinner every night in Minneapolis.