Death Row Cook

They ask for simple meals
and I rock and bundle and nurse
the ingredients. Noodles.
Eggs. Buttered potatoes.

They don't eat,
often. It comes back on the plastic
green trays. No
one ever wonders about

a dead man's leftovers.
I would request
baked chicken and rice,
turn the heat up to 375

to make the skin crisp, save
the drippings for the rice.
I don't study
the newspapers. I don't think

about what they did
or what it's said
they did. I make meals from
their childhood: macaroni and cheese,

hamburgers and pizza. Who knows
when you're going to die? Well,
they do. So I
tender the food for their healthy

bodies, their open mouths --
their open nighttime mouths.
It's like they're experiments
in life and death. One moment,

one moment, one moment and you're gone.
Food is the traditional gift
and they ask for simple things
-- simple as day and night,

simple as touching, though
touch isn't so simple
when you're locked up. They
want their gifts boiled

or warmed before I slide
them onto plates.
Like I said, I rock
the ingredients back and forth

in steel pots,
like some kind of industrial mother
for this, their last meal.
And if you didn't know,

a dead man's leftovers
are thrown away.

Copyright Louise Robertson