Alimentum YUM! Menu Poems

Alimentum: The Literature of Food online journal celebrate National Poetry Month each year with MENUPOEMS. This year, poets include Esther Cohen, Oded Halahmy, Dania Rajendra, Miriam Halahmy, Tony Fallon, Dean Lavin, Margaret Waldhelm, Lois Vendon, and Linda Larson.

While you’re there, check out this page of Recipe Poems, where, as a fan of pho, I discovered Kelly Morse’s poem “Phở bò Hà Nội” which she notes was inspired by a pho shop in Hanoi, Vietnam named Phở Thìn 13 Lò Đúc. Morse provides a narrative on her experience, and some great history on this culinary staple. You can’t help but salivate to read it:

Add a spoonful of tiny red chilis, and garlic,
fatly diced in their vinegars.
With spoon and chopsticks together give a heave

to the mass of white noodles and flip like an omelet,
dragging up from below the fresh herbs hidden in the inner curve.

YUM!