Recipe: Rhubarb, Ginger, and Chili Jam

By B. Tyler Lee

Issue 43 • Spring 2021 • Poetry

3 c. rhubarb, diced
6 Fresno chilis, deseeded and chopped
¼ c. grated ginger
3 c. jam sugar (with citric acid and pectin)
1 orange, juiced

Fed well in darkened greenhouses, rhubarb can sprout so swiftly it speaks, a series of pops and bursts, firecrackers in its stalks letting you know it’s alive.
Something mothers won’t admit: No matter how much you cradle a child, one of you will never be swaddled enough. My tall son, my man-sized son, cannot be held too long, knows no such feeling as too cozy or tight—with him, I can only be too ginger.
Perched high, leafstems like tightropes, lightning menaces Valencias far more than any disease.
Nightmares boil you, propel you from your sheets to check for breath: Some blazed thing struck; something chopped or peeled your sons. You search their beds for heartbeats, silence as your own pulse slows.
He tests spices, the blackness at the tip of the spoon new to him: Peppers “goddamn” into his sentences, talks of the blood he mops cold on rebooted screens of Doom.
Listen: In the dark, you can hear him, bursting forth in fits and starts. He grows red and sugared, green and bitter. He’s still a child, still juice and pulp and pith. I can make no new mistakes; the old ones form his roots. I know neither what he will open to let in peril and light, nor how I will let him go.

B. Tyler Lee

Tyler Lee is the author of one poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016), and her essay “A large volume of small nonsenses” won the 2020 Talking Writing Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Qwerty Literary Journal, Acting Up: Queer in the New Century (Jacar Press), and elsewhere. She teaches in the Midwest.

Kate Birch

Kate Jarvik Birch is a full time visual artist, author, playwright, and daydreamer. Her art has been featured worldwide in stores like Target, Pier One and World Market, as well as in television series and major motion pictures such as, Transparent, Medium, Glee, Twenty-One Jump Street and Looper. Her essays and short stories have been published in literary journals including Indiana Review and Saint Ann’s Review. She is also the author of the YA novels PERFECTED, TARNISHED, UNRAVELED and DELIVER ME. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.