Butter

By Teddy Webb

Hello Fridgescapers ! Before we reach back into our kitchen to present you with another food flavored poem, I would like to take another moment to thank you & Tania for the piece we put out on Friday about the myth of western goodness. Thank you for reading and sharing it widely (please continue to do so) & Thank you

Tania

for such an impactful piece of writing. We are so grateful!

Last week we had Johanna Dörrie’s ode to oat milk & this week we are proud to present Teddy Webb’s buttery words. Maybe our trapper keeper needs to be a kitchen! Dive right in!

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BUTTER

Once, when we were making alfredo
I asked you if we were perhaps using too much butter
and I was greeted with the kind of soft gravity you’d offer a toddler
reaching for sentimental glass - my love,
don’t ever say that to me again.
So when I make your breakfast,
the kitchen cold kitten’s teeth at my ankles
as I think of candlewax
dripping slowly
onto your wrists like soft batter on the countertop,
I try to melt
the butter in, the way you taught me:
run hot water till it shrieks onto the blade,
then sink in. I watch it dissipate and imagine
it’s indulgent, forget the own-brand label.
When you taste it the corners of your mouth
are still dewy with sleep. Good?
You smile as you do, flash pearl teeth
through the mouthguard you hate.
“A little vanilla”, you say, and kiss me.

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About the hot poet: Teddy Webb is a poet and essayist based in Brighton. After spending a journalism degree making zines on punk rock, poetry, and protest, disillusionment with the climate of mainstream journalism led her back to literature. "Pet topics" returned to again and again in their work include lesbian identity, Pagan history, and radical optimism in a late-stage capitalist hellscape. Her poems have been picked up for publication by Opal Age, Teiresian, and Butch-Femme Press.

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Thank you Teddy! Thank you reader! See u next week! Xoxo PTK