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Celestial Potatoes

Thanksgiving morning, poised I stand:
near cutting board, honed knife in hand.
My self-taught method must suffice:
ten pounds of tubers, peel and dice,
pot-boil, purée with whipping cream.
They grace the table, reign supreme,
snow-white, and soft as forest-moss,
upstaging bird and cranberry sauce.

If Heaven’s a perpetual feast,
rare morsels for the blest deceased,
then angels proffer Plato’s Form:
Ideal Potatoes, fluffy-warm.
And if Hell means unceasing wrack,
cruel demons take a fiendish tack:
mashed spuds served by a Ganymede,
like Tantalus’ fruit, appear, recede.

.

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Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.

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18 Responses

    • Mary Jane Myers

      Julian
      Apologies for this late response. Thank you for your favorable comment.
      I love the word “mashies”–I’ll add it to my cache-of-words!
      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Happy Thanksgiving. You must use heavy cream in your celestial potatoes! Your word choices were wonderful, as well as the rhymes!

    Reply
  3. Mary Gardner

    Evoking the taste of rich, savory mashed potatoes, this poem takes the reader straight into your kitchen.
    Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

    Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    I’m tempted to eschew pasta and mash up some spuds tomorrow, MJ.

    What a treat of a poem.

    Though somewhat sacrilegious (in view of your wonderful poem), find below a link to one of the first ads for instant mashed potato:

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Paul Apologies for this late response. Thank you for your praise. The ad is hilarious. At the time, housewives were so grateful for this new time-saver product, almost as handy as cream-of-mushroom soup! Pasta on Thanksgiving? Not in my family!

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  5. Cheryl A Corey

    I wouldn’t say that they upstage the turkey, but I’m looking forward to a generous helping of whipped potatoes, topped with a nice slab of butter & gravy. Thanks be to those dastardly white Conquistador colonizers for bringing them back to Europe from South America!

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Cheryl
      Apologies for my late response. Thank you for your whimsical comments. My favorite Thanksgiving dish is the stuffing, smothered in turkey gravy! The Conquistadors were turning Peru inside out, looking for gold. They found something better: potatoes!

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    What a great poem on a simple subject! And the division is perfect — the first stanza on the luscious recipe, and the second a philosophical/mythological meditation on the same: Plato, Ganymede, and Tantalus.

    Like your potatoes, it’s perfectly done!

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Joseph–

      Apologies for my late response. Thank you so much for your praise.

      Joseph, I have just finished a prosody class with James Matthew Wilson. We wrote 11 original poems and submitted a “chapbook” to him. He insists on perfect iambs. If we use rhyme, it has to be exact rhyme. He uses your poems “Laocoon in Hades” and “Jove’s Apologia to Juno for His Infidelity” as examplars of dramatic monologues on classical themes. The class agreed unanimously that your “Laocoon” poem is technically superior even to Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” One participant however objected to the phrase “serpentine pollution”–a phrase which I had highlighted as particularly interesting and felicitous. Love, love, love that delicious phrase! More wondrous even than perfect mashed potatoes!

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  7. Margaret Coats

    Delicious dish with classical garnish, Mary Jane! Thank Heaven for the potatoes and for the preparer.

    Reply
  8. Isabella

    Your potatoes do sound heavenly! A beautifully delicious poem. Happy Thanksgiving

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Isabella
      Apologies for this late response. Thank you for reading and commenting favorably on my “silly ditty.”

      May you have a wonderful Christmas!

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply

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