Instructions

At dawn, wake up. Dice the beef until minutiae appear.

The snoring in the rooms titillates like airwaves cut

by the motions of your knife. The slumbering birds retell last night’s news.

Cook the beef twice, thrice, until the heat has become part of the taste.

Chop onions while the house begins to wake. Onion and onion and

onion until the tears make a broth pooling around your feet.

If the birds have very little to say about the night before, turn on

the radio for song after song in a language you cannot replicate.

Let the onions steam, tenderise.

Wash the corrugated corn leaves at the same pace you would wash my hair.

Three eggs, cradled from fridge to pan, boil those silently in one corner.

Cool them off, peel them off, cut them off into orbital slices.

Build a mountain of leaves, see them fall. Feel the stirrings of the rooms.

Shake the pot awake, don’t forget the onions need to be held

at all times, chest to chest. Begin dissecting the corncobs into golden nuggets.

Your arms will be heavy by the second. Rest and continue and rest and continue

until your hands have disappeared in a sea of milky succulent teeth.

Ask the birds if they know what love tastes like. Preheat the oven. Assemble.

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Fran Fernández Arce is a Chilean poet currently living in the intersection between Santiago, Chile, and Suffolk, England. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, The Poetry Review, and Lighthouse, among others.