Our mother’s at a meeting
for some big, important deal,
and couldn’t be at home tonight
to cook the evening meal.

She left some short directions
for my sister just to follow.
Instead my sister cooked up things
impossible to swallow.

Like Brussels sprouts in vinegar
and jellybeans in mustard,
an onion-pickle pudding
and a lemon-radish custard.

She burned a stick of butter
’til the house was filled with smoke,
then fried a pound of pepper
with a half an artichoke.

She put a whole banana
in the blender with a steak,
then mixed it up with tunafish
and baked it in a cake.

She stirred some chocolate ice cream
with garbanzo beans and bacon.
A single bite was all it took
to leave me feeling shaken.

We should have ordered pizza
but we didn’t know, alas,
my sister is the only kid
who flunked her cooking class.