I mean, I tried to
alarm restaurants, you know
with olive oil and thyme, and once
in Brazil with chimichurri.
Let me correct myself, only
with thighs, I replied.
I watched a voice hold on to legs
and crave a living thing
shot, plucked, and roasted.
The carnage of thighs
slowly melting in salt.
From pages 71-72 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
In telling a star
that you are of the
cosmos, floating in terms
of eating the movement of our past
wretchedness, must not
discourage us.
Our daily prayer should be that our
guts hold out for an
Italian-sausage sandwich with fried onions
and green peppers, dissolved in marinara.
I returned to the pursuit
I intended to, and drink wine
without tearing the fantasy.
From pages 120-121 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
The skull can call winter
a naked eye, sightless and shot.
What I ate, I caught
with the moon lost to the woods.
The white bones
of wolves can kill,
by eating the advice
of a bird.
From pages 50-51 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
Certain swells of uneaten
lipstick swirled my attention.
I know the gusto I saw in gloss,
anguished my gut.
I chewed all things sudden,
in the early hour, stuck
in the wilderness among loons
with a specific charm.
We used to say the murderer
is a mistake corrected.
From pages 76-77 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
I might gurgle
caviar just before visiting
a pig, in a secret
of greed and wine.
Once I heard the wings
of a black bird and finished
my breakfast, a blanket
of basil roasted in garlic.
This is a way to leave
a sea of forest, rippling
green in the wind.
From pages 158-159 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
for John Thorne
There is that rare creature reading
in the kitchen, whose head vowed
to the northern lights to bake bread.
There is not a mystery in bread.
Pleasure is a meatball that
in your brain you want to
eat and assemble.
From pages 162-163 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
Never eat more than
your head weighs.
My food won’t spoil with
unmerciful jest.
I suggested a recipe which made
my heart sore.
My virtue has been
the wish to eat
and good cookery.
Eating is a relief,
given a skillfully cooked fish.
A good kitchen is a curious
genius like headcheese.
My stomach thought about those
triumphs and admitted
the fervor of our collected madness.
From pages 168-169 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
Locate a desire
to envy brook trout.
Lie very still to become
a bear for religious reasons that
wouldn’t matter much for an older
bear, slow in the memory
of eating and hunger.
That night, I recall dancing
and the words the bear set fire to,
saying that it is better
not to think in bed.
From pages 116-117 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
There must be freedom hearing coyotes
chase the wind, the meaning of
cranes before their enraged flush.
The bear has caught your scent and the raven
answered you fifty-seven times.
It was a long trip
to the Dunes Saloon for a few
coyotes in their restless fire so that
shaking hands with the three-quarter
moon it occurred to me that the birds
needed renaming.
I was entitled to a little wine and a specific
glory of becoming a small brown bird.
From pages 67-68 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
There is more to life than not
looking back on black fly bites as if
rearranging clouds.
A whistle that wasn’t a bird, twisting
in a finger snap.
That will come later after the woods
bow to the lightning, dripping from electricity.
In the dark
I caught lilac in my throat,
slept with the Milky Way despite
it being too greedy and stuck
in the particulars of what we do every day.
From pages 94-95 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
The kitchen and I
can't seem to learn
from appetite.
A heavyweight belly,
awake only for two
tortillas and beans,
pasta with garlic,
ten pounds of elk
sautéed in butter.
I eat to be hungry,
to eat midnight and the moon.
From page 243 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
In my head like a warm dust
from chiles, the neck of a raven
and coyote are to be found
a fabulous restorative, if
you can eat menudo.
Picture yourself with cilantro,
a squeeze of lemon, arriving
in Michigan.
From page 24 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
Good is
a smoked pork chop licked
for salt crawling below
the white cotton of the
mosquito girl who left me
herring the odor of a
second from the blind eye
like a madness that goes eating.
From page 32 of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison (Grove Press, 2001).
Whatever strange roots have done
ugly things, my hope survived
and served the sound of some
random introduction who
believed I escaped.
from page 724 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
I want to keep
the butter. It is
the best start for
a perfect mood.
from page 79 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
I lash the rough
euphoria of morning.
I seem to be hungrier
sitting in the kitchen,
rumored to be all
I know and give.
from page 526 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
I was another kind of tonight, there
with the radical fear of, immediately
that I’ll get over before
a spectator frenzies to touch.
from page 430 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
Before I understood the dogs
barking, I was up early.
The happy teeth
dream of unctuous
laboring on coconut
crab back floating
in a spectacle of science
or maybe so much frenzy
which is different from
just eating dinner.
from page 383 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
For Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee
Space seems like the garbled
note of a loon beyond the context
of light. Who calls the hand
heavy or almost right?
Why expect a new word
to understand the world.
from page 270 of Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976 by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2000
