Category: Flavor Town USA

Flavor Town USA Short Story: “A Juicy Soul” by Coleman Bigelow

As I prepare to enter the icy river, my mind wanders to that slice of meat lovers I’ve left behind. I’m regretting my restraint. Not eating all of my “last supper” now seems like an unnecessary sacrifice. What’s the point of being born again if you don’t go out with a gulp? The first time…
Flavor Town USA Fiction: “Definition: Love” by Winslow Schmelling

/ləv/ n.1 Origin: gas station hotdog “Remember how the attendant gave the rest of them to us for free? He hesitated for that heavy moment after we asked for two of them. I swear I saw his eyes glaze. Visions. PTSD. Memories of war. ‘You can just have them,’ he said, placing each dynamite stick into…
Three Flavor Town USA Poems by Kathleen Hellen

every animal is broken differently cook it slow, the butcher says, like jazz or countrywestern—doesn’t matter something you can dance to—something you can masterlike chief cook and bottle-washer, recognize that parrot is a noun, that parrot is a table mannerthat you always start with definition, recognize the cuts as hangers flap meat Denver steaks coulotte,…
Poetry for Flavor Town USA: “Ode to Oil” by Sarah A. Etlinger

To the hot oil sizzling in the pan as I stand hereand make dinner, chicken cutlets, fish cakes, latkes. To the oil that burns and chars the panso I have to scrub it clean, scour black scars, and dump the remainsin an old coffee can kept under the sink like my mother did,to its scent…
New Poetry for Flavor Town USA: “Coordinates: Kool-Aid Arctic Grapes” by Avery Gregurich

A slight delicacy: supermarket green grapes covered with Kool-Aid powder, frozen solid, a real “Welcome to Wisconsin” moment where otherwise broke down supper clubs mark the towns, or where they once were. Flavor is preference, but Strawberry Kiwi is best. I had them in Madison the week they’d just culled seventy-two geese and donated their…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Our Very First Shared Fig Newton, 1986” by Zebulon Huset

A buried poem* of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig” My early cookie preference was for classics—Oreo, Chips Ahoy, the exotic Nutter Butterfor special occasions that don’t requirecandle or cake. All day at summer campfending off “Indian” burns and wet williesat the same time, mealtimes the only respitefor both of us, it seemed. Our otherwiseempty…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “How We Make Do” by Ginger Ayla

My grandma said in the Depression they ate specks of marrow from the bone, in the Depression they’d wear out every man-made material to deterioration, so determined they were to love things to death. I am familiar with the economics of diminishing, have added more until it became less, squandered like backs and necks of…
Two Poems for Flavor Town USA by Anne Panning

The Butter Principle Life is like cold, hard butter. A pebble in your shoe.A stubborn child who won’t release the Snicker bar inthe checkout line. An axe to grind against the iceberg. But.How about that shy, self-deprecating toast burnt black? Theknife hacks away at like it a he-man. But. Cold butter standsup for the underdog.…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Cravings,” an original sonnet by Molly McGrane

Torn from the ashes we haveold women come to remind us that skinny looks good in dresses but not onfaces. Die with a naked mole rat visage or die of diabetes with a #7 double.In junior high I ate cheese until grease dripped with my tears down my chins. Retirement will hide the animalistic tendencies…