“Why You Should Not Date a Chef” by Liz Green (Poetry ’05)
Poetry alumn Liz Green was recently featured in The Woolf. Read an excerpt of “Why You Should Not Date a Chef” and find a link to the full text below:
Why You Should Not Date a Chef
He tells you there are so many words for love in Arabic, yet he says none of them to you.
The last time you fucked, looking up at your face he whispered You are so beautiful.
Among a serpentine lace of live-oak branches, his apartment seems to float.
His roommate Elizabeth likes to snatch your earring off in her beak almost before you feel anything. You worry about the diamond stud in her mouth, its sharpness.
Elizabeth is an Eclectus parrot with red and blue feathers. Occasionally a downy, plum-colored feather appears on his floorboards, from somewhere. Her eyes are all iris, like dark buttons, achingly alert.
Each eye has a ring of fine turquoise feathers around it like eyeshadow, you say. He’s had her for two years, since before he knew you. Since his divorce.
Continue reading here: Liz Green | The Woolf
