This poem was published in Sweet Tongues, Crocus book of food poems, an anthology published by Commonword, Manchester in 2013.

Sunday morning

Frighten the eggs with cold water.
Do it quickly. A dog or a cat
for egg cup? You choose.
(The dog has a blue eye.
Sulphur yellow and spiteful
black make up the cat’s
colour spectrum.) Just now
Joyce Carol Oates spoke
on Private Passions of her love
of Chopin and her interest
in boxing. Boxing has a history,
she said and, just like music,
you learn more from a replay.
It was an old city where that other
poet sat, coolly cracking
the egg of a fine Leghorn chicken.
Venice? Rhodes?
You tell me the title,
I’ll give you the last line:
Surely we have….
No! Don’t start that again.