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Party Trick

Apoorva Sripathi

I tried twisting
a cherry stem in my mouth
so I could impress you

but instead I tied my tongue,
in the process inextricably slipping the oxblood fruit down my throat
where it is now liminally lodged,

holding me back from conveying
how I really feel — look, let me lop off
the top of a Champagne bottle with a sabre

perhaps in the process I might cut off your head
and maybe that will tell me
how I feel about you.

Bitter Sweet

Apoorva Sripathi

To make caramel
you have to burn the sugar first, watch it
singe before
soothing it with cream and butter, a bullying
process which repeats
poured hot
onto cold ice cream – watch it
melt into a small puddle of insolence
down your throat and spill back
into hot sugar on a cold night
caramelised as hard brittle and soft chews,
spun into dense taffy and cotton wisps of bright pink hair,
coated into shells and stuffed inside fudge,
until broken into pieces gathered to
make hot caramel that will sing again;
bittersweet honey and joy. But the making of sugar is
caustic – bodies as commodities,
peoples as industries,
sugar as slaver, and sweetness
as deception.

Apoorva Sripathi is a writer, editor, poet, and artist from Chennai, now based in London. She writes shelf offering, a newsletter weaving together food, art, memory, history, and politics. She is the co-founder and editor of CHEESE, the magazine of culture, and her writing has been published in Kinfolk, Vittles, Wellcome Collection, and Feminist Food Journal. She is also the co-founder and co-editor of chlorophyll. More of her stuff here.