bitty

Antidotes to Fear of Death
by Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

• baba ganoush, with eggplant*, tahini, smoked paprika, umami seasoning, garlic*, and parsley*
  
• roasted summer squash*
  
• roasted eggplant*
  
• green salad with red-leaf and romaine lettuces*, corn*, cucumber*, tuna, and a mix of fridge pickles (radish*, Hakurei turnip*, kale* stems)
  
• vegetable saute with onion, carrot*, broccoli* and tofu, seasoned with a mix of miso, soy sauce, and yangnyeom sauce
  
• cod cheeks sauted with onions and golden zucchini* (with a bit of leftover relish from canning to make some tartar sauce)
  
• canning:
  
  • 5 pints of mildly spicy fennel*-zucchini* relish with onion and lemon
    
  • 2 pints of pickled garlic scapes* and garlic*
    
  • 4 pints of garlicky* carrot* pickles

• massaged kale* with lemon-tahini dressing and sunflower seeds (kale* stems chopped and added to the big jar of fridge pickles)
  
• cabbage* and carrot* slaw
  
• green salad with salanova*, roasted summer squash*, cucumber, sunflower seeds, and feta, dressed with oil and vinegar
  
• dilly* cucumber* salad
  
• dilly* potato salad with hard-boiled eggs, parsley*, and chives*
  
• roasted summer squash*, fennel*, and onion, then topped with silverbrite salmon fillets themselves topped with peach hot* sauce and panko and baked
  
• roasted beets* (for later green salad)
  
• zucchini* kugel

• 2 pounds of beets
  
• 4 pounds of carrots
  
• 12 pickling cucumbers (I chose the smallest I could find; some were rather larger than I like)
  
• 12 summer squashes (I chose large ones, including some pattypan, some zucchini, and some zephyr two-toned ones)
  
• 8 heads of green garlic
  
• two bunches of green curly kale (I swapped one for a fennel)
  
• 1 pound of salanova leaves (‘baby lettuce’)
  
• 1 pound basil
  
• take what you want mint and parsley (I chose a bit of each)