A Shot at Myth Making

      If someone taught you

how to make a sauce,

you’d be doomed too

to teach another.

We sisters, lit by a September sun,

oversee plopping tomatoes

bleed to a boil.  Olive oil,

salt, garlic, basil

offer us a shot at myth-making,

though it’s cheaper to buy a jar of the stuff—

as it was with Zia Appollonia,

sugar’s one-legged

martyr, who lifted

her widowed back out

of the wheelchair

beside the white stove

to confront the heat

that snaps at water

                            droplets, and forkless poked the sizzling cloves