chzmongrrrweeps' Journal

8:54am: Ode to Manteche
Oh Manteche

Beautiful, butter-filled ball
No one knows what to do with you
You don’t seem so complicated to me

I’ll scoop out your slab,
leave you open and waiting like a butternut squash
before the Moosewood hippies
fill you with raisins
and stick you in a communal oven

I will use your infused insides
For greasing my casserole,
savory bakings,
omelettes of stature.

Then I will carve your provolone shell,
eat you with apples,
grate you into my bubbling stew,
melt you on my polenta.

Oh Manteche,
people will talk.
Say, like Parrano, that you only pretend to be Italian.
Spread rumors that your name means "lard".
Declare you a heart attack encased in wax.

People will mock you
but it’s just because they are scared
Your dairy synergy is love to me.



(Please note on the linked website the writer was so overcome with Manteche love that they misspelled the cheese in the description.)

4:20pm: Reflections on visiting other stores
For the record, Asshole,
Your offerings are precious and unaffordable
That accent is hella fake
And your refrigerator is
NOT
A "cave".

4:55pm: Holiday cheese dreams
The walls are alive
or maybe pasteurized,
or possibly even thermalized,
with floor to ceiling cheese.

More deliveries are coming,
airplanes full of Saenkanter and chevre
ships loaded with D’affinois and Gruyere
trucks are lining up at the loading dock.
Butch drivers and metal dudes wheel handtrucks through the store,
bringing my cheese to me.

Bringing in the cheese
Bringing in the cheese
They all come rejoicing,
Bringing in the cheese

But I’m stuck here
in my 38-40 degree box
Cheese piling higher
Walling me in
Like that guy in the Edgar Allen Poe story
But colder.
and probably smellier

The cheese piles higher.
I swear I can hear it mold
and watch it turn green, white, black and red
in my dairy dreams of anxiety
that come to haunt me
at this time every year
when it seems I’ve bought more cheese than the entire city could consume

But
every year
on the Friday after Thanksgiving
the shelves will be empty,
barren,
looking like biblical fields hit by plagues of locusts
Like grocery store shelves after a hurricane alert
Like library shelves would look if people stopped watching TV.

At least,
I hope so…

10:37am: Somatic cell count
What is that?
Turning the milk a funny color
Oh no! not that!
Looks like a sore on the udder.

Was it rBGH?
That caused this swelling and pain
Can we recreate?
A pastoral farmscape again?

It’s always sad
Factories taking the farms from us
It makes me mad
When the milk mixes with the pus.

3:53pm: Rennet
What is it?

What kind of alchemy is this?
you turn pure white fluid into
chunky
squeaky
tasty
lovely
curds of joy

Some say the Greeks,
perhaps the ancestors of nick mamatas,
found you
hiding in the stomach of a sheep
or goat
they were using as a satchel
to quench thirst
on a long journey

But I know
you are a spell
summoned by a conjurer of coagulation
churning out rivers of weeping whey
and leaving behind
the magic moment of milk,
a monument to moo cows

2:14pm: Rockin' da Fromajj
Hold on
Mr. Fake French Man
with your pretentious pronunciation
you bought an attitude with that vacation plane ticket
but you can't buy a fromage-filled soul

I don't care what
you think you learned
when French tourguides told you stories
and took your money
to see what you'd believe

This
is our cheese counter
and we pronounce it however we want
leave your money
but keep your words to yourself

or you shall go to the dumpster
as soon as I bag you up

1:58pm: unintentional casu marzo
wiggly wriggly
piggly wiggly
chameleon cocoon, color of the cheese you eat

seepy drippy
creepy weepy
you're the texture of the skin crawling on my arms

you shall go to the dumpster
as soon as I bag you up

1:49pm: ammonia
brownish-black
fly-attracting
no one loves you anymore
not even me
and I'm paid to

you smell like
mothers
mopping floors
in the '50s before the Beaver died in Vietnam

you shall go to the dumpster
as soon as I bag you up