celeste doaks, a poet and journalist, is the recipient of the 2009 Academy of American Poets Graduate Prize and AWP WC&C Scholarship.
Her journalism has appeared in multiple journals such as the Village Voice and Time Out New York; her most recent poems appear in Asheville Poetry Review and on Torch.com. Doaks received her MFA degree from North Carolina State University and is currently a creative writing professor at East Carolina University.
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No Leftovers
Sometimes momma disguised last night’s baked chicken
in a casserole or a fancy stir-fry since everyone knew
daddy, the military man, didn’t do day-old, freezer-burned anything.
He always sniffed out leftovers like a dusty grenade hidden
in deep foreign soil. Even if the plates and silverware shone
like new money his wrinkled brow, or sullen frown, trained me
to understand that fresh is always best. So momma taught me how
to please a man, this man, my father, through his stomach.
And here began my training as a mini-sous chef, everyday
snapping the peas, shucking bushels of Grandad’s garden corn,
my six-year-old legs dangling off that mustard yellow kitchen chair,
everything a warning; the husks and silks revealing tender kernels,
the leafy green shells floating into a paper bag of airy nothingness.