The Chef Told Me

by Jennifer Saunders

I needed to learn to love
cooking, told me that sea bass
blackened on the grill is best

when sweetened with a hint
of brown sugar and the fourth
chamber of my heart. Oxygen rich

and pulsing. The chef told me
I needed a fish spatula, a paella pan,
a spirit open to the wonders 

of Himalayan salt and saffron,
their hues of lavender and gold. 
He told me I needed to love

the chop and slice, the blade 
sharpened on my ribs. 
Whetstone and water, the apex 

of the edge. The chef told me
to love what I kill and kill
what I eat, he told me I needed

to know what was in season. 
Bobwhite quail, Canada goose, 
grapes and chokecherries.

He told me I needed wild mushrooms 
dried myself in the oven overnight.
The number for poison control.

::

Jennifer Saunders (she/her) is the author of Tumor Moon, winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest (Concrete Wolf, 2025) and Self Portrait with Housewife, winner of the Clockwise Chapbook Competition (Tebot Bach, 2019). A Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Orison nominee, Jennifer’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Baltimore Review, The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, Santa Fe Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of Stained: an anthology of writing about menstruation (Querencia Press, 2023) and lives in German-speaking Switzerland where she teaches skating in a hockey school.

Image: Tatiana Tochilova

ID: Basket filled with a variety of mushrooms.