Rita is in her summer dress. She’s got
the mixer out and she is hard at work
perfecting home-made mousse au chocolat.
I for my part am typing like a clerk
 
at my computer. Rita’s got cacao
and mascarpone and banana, all
to form her own concoction. And just now,
she brings a spoon to sample it. You’d call
 
her labor sui generis – you won’t
turn up this recipe. And yet, the tongue
delights – the eyes close – as the do or don’t
of custom pales. The mousse is made. I’ve sung
 
my wife in her blue dress with its red spots,
I’ve sung the kitchen where she takes her ease –
the house’s heart, with all its pans and pots.
I’ve sung the afternoon. Bring more of these.

*****

John Claiborne Isbell writes: ” ‘Mousse au chocolat’ is a true story inspired by my wife Rita’s taste for improvisation when cooking. The results are invariably delicious. As for the form, it’s just four quatrains of iambic pentameter. My volume Allegro is light verse; I ought really to write more of it.”

‘Mousse au chocolat’ was published in Snakeskin 321, October 2024.

John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018), with a cello on the cover and available on Amazon; he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023) both available free online. John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee, representing France in the European Championships in 1991, and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.

An Outline of Romanticism in the West https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0302

Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850  https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0346

Staël, Romanticism and Revolution: The Life and Times of the First European  https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/stael-romanticism-and-revolution/E808497413C10F2814375C7CF131E221

Photo: “Mousse au chocolat” by eric.delcroix is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.