Poetry
Instructions: Angel Food Cake
Cultivate the do-it-right habit.It makes the job a joy.
—All About Home Baking, General Mills, 1943
Becca Hall
Pre-heat oven, 325. Prepare yourself. This is a devotion.
Sift flour once. Make a choice: you will do this thing.
Add ½ C sugar to separate the flour particles. Assess your tools:
cheekbones, wit.
Sift flour four times: great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, you.
Beat egg whites and salt with flat wire whisk. Each stroke, a negation.
Where you came from is not where you will go.
When foamy, add tartar. Keep beating. Learn your own strength, the cut
of their bodies in yours.
Beat until eggs are stiff enough to hold peaks, but not dry. Balance your
smile and your capacity to harm.
Add remaining sugar. Believe in God.
Mix in flavorings. Tell the lies I know you. Cap their bottles. Yell.
Sift ¼ C flour over mixture. Do what you can with what they gave you.
Fold in lightly.
Repeat until nothing’s left.
Turn into ungreased cake pan. What you made of your life is not yours.
Cut through batter to remove bubbles. Learn truth. Learn knives.
Bake in a slow oven, one hour. Feel a curling inwards, an unexpected
lightness of breath.