One of my duties as Tweetspeak’s first official Poet Laura is to eat chocolate and write chocolate poems. I have Part A of this responsibility down pat, with Aldi’s Moser Roth Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt playing a key supportive role. (Fair trade, reasonably priced, delicious. If you live in one of the fourteen states without an Aldi, I suggest you get to those real estate listings.)
Chocolate is one of my daily required food groups, so you’d think I’d have written a poem or two in honor of the elixir. I couldn’t think of any off the top of my head, so I searched my Google Docs, which I’ve used pretty much exclusively since 2014, and found just one line referencing chocolate in a poem about ice cream. So, it’s about time I give chocolate its due in a dedicated poem.
A number of chocolate poems center on love, sensuality, and joy. And rightly so. Take a look at Barbara Crooker’s “Ode to Chocolate,” and tell me she hasn’t nailed the magic (apologies to milk “chocolate” fans).
Ode to Chocolate
I hate milk chocolate, don’t want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don’t want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle. You know the color.
Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave’s
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.
Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette. Always bets
on the noir.
—Barbara Crooker, author of More
But because I can be utterly disagreeable and, I don’t know—charmingly complex?—my first attempt at chocolate poetry ended up a little less than celebratory.
Cocoa Catastrophes
What’s not so sweet:
The Junior Mint that fell in my purse
during the movie smashing itself
into the grooves of my car key.
My four-year-old daughter
munching a morsel she found on the floor,
screaming in betrayal
when she realized it had tumbled
from her brother’s diaper.
The chocolate I melted and poured
into pumpkin-shaped molds for my ninth-grade teachers
late into the night before Halloween.
My classmate scoffing, “You didn’t make those
for your teachers, did you?” as I shoved
the cellophane bags in the bottom of my backpack
to spread and smear like my shame.
The hot chocolate scalding my jean-covered thigh.
The M&M’s I bought for an eighteenth birthday alone.
The dusty white veil coating the expired Valentine candy.
The brownie cheesecake baking dish
shattering before we could have one piece.
The chocolate drizzle on my cappuccino—
ordered an hour ago with a gleam of foam in my eye—
settling to the bottom. The grainy sludge
hitting me heavy on the lips like a kiss goodbye.
I’ll admit this poem feels like an early-stage draft—if not still a brainstorm of sorts. Any one of these images could become its own poem, a truffle or cream in a whole box of Sad Chocolate Poems. It is precisely because of chocolate’s power over the taste buds, mind, and emotions that it’s easy to recall so many chocolate-related incidents, even the sad ones, from my past. Ask me to list memories involving butternut squash, or even Skittles, and I’ll be lucky to come up with just one. That’s because these foods lack the intoxicating qualities of chocolate. Or, perhaps, because I don’t eat them nearly as much.
Whatever the nature and mood of your chocolate-laden memories, I challenge you to start writing them down. See where they take you in your rich emotions of caramel and wistfulness, epiphany and ganache. You never know what you’re going to get.
Photo by Michael Mueller, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Tania Runyan.
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How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
- Flowers of California: California Poppy - December 8, 2022
- Flowers of California: Lily of the Nile - October 13, 2022
- Flowers of California: Crape Myrtle - October 5, 2022
Sandra Heska King says
I cracked up at your daughter munching the morsel from her brother’s diaper. I am not immune to scarfing up a stray unadulterated* M&M from the bottom of my purse or even the floor–although I vow now to eye it better before popping it in my mouth. Though we no longer deal with diapers. Though we do have a dog now.
*Unadulterated meaning nobody should ever mess with the original–no peanuts, no mint or other flavors–including dark chocolate, no caramel (that belongs in Milk Duds), etc, etc, etc. It’s okay to change the shell color–which, of course, must never be crunched. It’s meant to melt in your mouth.
Same goes for Oreo Cookies. Just pass the original. No new flavors. No double stuffed.
I mean seriously.
Will Willingham says
So, I just went searching for a news story on Oreos, because the answer to a question in a recent episode of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me was about Oreos, and something about eating too many of them.
I cannot find the story. But I can offer these two other newsworthy items:
1) Tiramisu Oreos are releasing as a limited edition in April. Two layers of cream.
2) The “Most Stuf” version of the cookie will re-release this winter, which puts Double Stuf and Mega Stuf to shame. Or, vice versa. I’m not sure.
Sandra Heska King says
Argh!!!
Also… I love tiramisu—but it should exist as a stand-alone.
Tania says
I was born in 1972, meaning I came of age during the CORRECT M&M colors of green, orange, yellow, light brown, and dark brown. Forget the red and blue and various holiday colors.
Will Willingham says
Ah, but don’t forget that in the year of your birth, red m&ms were still in the package, not removed until the red scare of 1976. So those of us a decade your senior remember when that *was* one of the correct colors.
Lol.
Tania Runyan says
I know! I am in the special mid-GenX non-red-M&M generation. Red M&Ms still feel “new” to me!
Laura Lynn Brown says
Kakawa
To the girl turning 18
with M&Ms alone:
there will be
better friends,
better birthdays,
better chocolate than this.
They will require harder choices
than plain or peanut.
You’ll have to go to the desert.
You’ll have to take a plane.
You’ll have to invite people.
Search for a sanctuary
in adobe and turquoise,
with a table and chairs
under trees nothing like
what grows at home.
Imagine
edible poems:
cocoa-chili elixir,
squares powdered in pistachio,
even painted with gold.
Behold
the music of laughter,
a co-celebrant close as a brother,
more love than can fit at one table,
raising cobalt mugs to you.
Drink it in.
Tania says
Laura!!! Oh my goodness. I am crying. This poem is a beautiful gift. The truest birthday (and chocolate) poem ever.
Will Willingham says
“They will require harder choices.”
Indeed.
Rhonda Danette Owen says
Laura, Love your response to the girl turning 18. Such lovely images. I want to drink chocolate at that table under the trees and listen to the music of laughter.
Tania: I, too, laughed out loud at the image of your daughter munching the morsel from the floor. And your remembrances of chocolate gone/done wrong are poignant as well as humorous. Chocolate happens.
Tania says
Chocolate happens, indeed! Thanks so much for your comment/commiseration, Rhonda!
lynn__ says
Barbara’s poem was delectable and Laura’s definitely a sweet gift! I love dark chocolate too…pure OR adulterated. I hope you don’t mind, Tania, if I share a short “etheree” from my blog, entitled “seeds of temptation”:
ripe
surprise–
strawberries!
huge heart-shaped fruit
garnish with green caps
dip in dark chocolate
drizzle with white almond bark
taste sumptuous delicacy
sweetly succulent valentine treat
honey, I love you…now pass me that plate!
Tania Runyan says
I love it! Chocolate-dipped strawberries indeed deserve a genre of their own!