How to Make Pancakes
After Imitation of Life (1934)
This is how you make pancakes:
Buy some butter
Even if the butter is bitter.
Sift together flour, baking powder, & sugar.
Pour milk & butter into the batter
to make the batter better.
Grab the whisks—beat eggs eagerly.
Pour canola oil into the skillet.
Mix until smooth, fool.
Fancy how many perfectly round
pancakes you can flip.
Serve brown, hot, & exhausted.
Whisper the secret of your recipe
promised for your grave
when a pretty white lady
asks you for it.
Pretend she thinks your pancakes
are as sweet as you.
This is how your daughter discovers
she cannot lick the batter:
shoot your eyes to the clouds,
wear a cheeky smile.
Make the smallness of your wit humorous.
Accept 20% interest
on your own pancake business.
Buy some butter
Even if the butter is bitter
Put it in the batter
To make the batter better
Better than her bitter butter
But your batter is not bitter
Be not bitter.
This is how it feels to be eaten
out of a box
in front of your child:
Give the silver ladle
to families who consume you.
Bury the pickaninny head scarf.
Your death wish chariot—
pearls and pressed curls.
Give them the same buck-toothed smile
painted red,
less lip.
Buy some butter
Even if the butter is bitter.
Sift together flour, baking powder, & sugar.
Pour milk & butter into the batter
to make the batter better.
Grab the whisks—beat eggs eagerly.
Pour canola oil into the skillet.
Mix until smooth, fool.
Fancy how many perfectly round
pancakes you can flip.
Serve brown, hot, & exhausted.
Whisper the secret of your recipe
promised for your grave
when a pretty white lady
asks you for it.
Pretend she thinks your pancakes
are as sweet as you.
This is how your daughter discovers
she cannot lick the batter:
shoot your eyes to the clouds,
wear a cheeky smile.
Make the smallness of your wit humorous.
Accept 20% interest
on your own pancake business.
Buy some butter
Even if the butter is bitter
Put it in the batter
To make the batter better
Better than her bitter butter
But your batter is not bitter
Be not bitter.
This is how it feels to be eaten
out of a box
in front of your child:
Give the silver ladle
to families who consume you.
Bury the pickaninny head scarf.
Your death wish chariot—
pearls and pressed curls.
Give them the same buck-toothed smile
painted red,
less lip.
Ciara Miller, a native of Chicago, is a poetry MFA candidate and an African American/African Diaspora Studies MA candidate at Indiana University. She has published academic essays and poems in such collections and periodicals as Callaloo, SLC Review, Alice Walker: Critical Insights, PLUCK, Chorus, Toegood Poetry, Cave Canem Anthology XII, African American Review, and Blackberry Magazine.