Bob Lucky

Secret Ingredient

When grandma died, I went by her house and picked up a shoebox full of hand-written recipes before anyone could toss it. I had to have her famous recipe for buttermilk pie. I found it scribbled on the back of an old electric bill. But it never turned out for me. Something was missing. She must have done it on purpose. One day I went to her grave and gave her the silent treatment, and god too.

a bouquet
of silken roses
gathers dust –
even with eyes closed
I can't smell a thing

Note: Revision of a tanka prose published in Atlas Poetica 23, Fall 2015.