Ann Vickery














Siteswap recipe





Siteswap recipe







Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with “B”
And put in the oven for baby and me.
 
After the vanilla siteswap comes modernity.
Sugar it anyway you want, remember to mix well.
This is, after all, spectacularly easy.
When it comes to juggling a couple of eggs
or more, is it me who turns out to be
      yoked to the air?
To the watcher it proceeds as an arc        exhilarating
But to the worker, the wife, or one made wedded
to routine, it’s simply a matter of
 trying to keep time                            
   keep up        keep going
     avoid the fall.                       
The usual master chefs reminding how it’s all
meant to work from the ground up,
how to achieve consistency in these preheated days
of fragility.  Two eggs. A parting.  
To throw or be thrown. Sometimes I use three
although the free range pronouns keep running out.         
I avoid following the tried and true,
remove all sentiment and make light
of overcooked conundrums and their additive clichés.  
In these neo-liberal days of having one’s cake
and eating it too, no-one says how
to beat or beggar the sticky mess of it.
 
     Bake, baby, bake, bake, ba…b….