Cooking with Oils, by Pamela Joyce Shapiro

Tomato and Knife, by Richard Diebenkorn (USA) 1962.

​Cooking with Oils
 
He slipped behind me,
a chef’s blade in his hand,
Imagine, he whispered,
being caressed by knives.
 
I couldn’t imagine, and said so.
But he smelled of good oil paints,
and his voice fell through my shoulders
to linger in my knees.
 
Sometimes, in the kitchen--
cutting tomatoes, slicing bread--
I’ll get a sense of him
and breathe it in.

Pamela Joyce Shapiro

Pamela Joyce Shapiro is a cognitive psychologist intrigued by memory and language.  She teaches psychology in Philadelphia and writes poetry to capture thoughts and moments otherwise forgotten.  Once upon  a time, she studied drawing and printmaking at the Philadelphia College of Art and Tyler School of Art. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry Breakfast and Better Than Starbucks, The Ekphrastic Review, Unlost, and One Sentence Poems.