SOCKS THE SOFTEST MERINO WOOL

The tongue on my foot’s arch has taste buds which send signals to a woman who lives in a single room in a city. I don’t know her but I want her to be happy so I walk barefoot on things that might taste good. I make culinary landscapes in a kiddie pool: marshes of sautéed onion and garlic, puddles of chocolate syrup, beaches of cinnamon sugar.

The woman in the single room has a cookbook from which she cooks every evening. She works through page by page, never skipping. When she gets to the end she begins again. She can’t taste her recipes but she trusts the ratios and knows the timing is just right.

When the meal is complete - salted, peppered, and lemonbrightened - the woman places the meal on plates or in bowls and sets them on her table, from which they disappear and reappear on the sidewalk of a small street just a few corners from her apartment. She goes unaware that her meals are served so nearby.

It is a well-known secret that the meal is consistent, so there is always a small hungry crowd gathered on the sidewalk with utensils at the ready.

The people who eat the woman’s meal on the street have control over the general mood of the world. They don’t know this for certain, but a few have their suspicions. The people praise or critique the dinner in food-muffled shouts, and the spirit of their words show up in the next day’s events.

There was a week of global conflict once because of ongoing disagreements over whether or not the meals were over-salted. One month the food didn’t appear (the woman had been very sick) and the people thought their cook had died, so they grieved openly together in the street. And for that month events transpired to make the whole world grieve, openly and together.

When the people are satisfied and inspired by a nourishing meal, all seems to go right in the world. Movements for justice gain momentum, worthy revolutions succeed, and all forms of violence subside with artistic expression taking their place.

Those who suspect their power praise even the most mediocre meals. At first they tried superlative praise, proclaiming every dish the best ever, but they found that this gave rise to liars and ego-driven regimes all over the world.

So the people rethought their methods and landed on a statement simple, positive, and true. And with immense power: our needs have been met by this meal.

Dani Himes is a poet who recently self-published a chapbook titled The Felt Body Thistles while in the poetry certificate program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is earning her Master in Social Work at PSU and spends her days working with elders in community based care. She lives in Portland, Oregon with Pando, her dog, and Chickadee, her cat. You can send her a note at featherlunglaughter@gmail.com