Spritz cookie shotgun-- 
The ritual violence of baking and
good girls don't burn in the oven

Everyone's mother had
a spritz cookie shotgun
loaded on the bottom shelf
of the baking cabinet--
We needed protection from 
rolling pin thin nights where
frustrated winter threw fists of 
dough at the kitchen windows--
the pots and pans clattered
and fell from the shelves
and another painted blue plate
shattered on the floor
into a pile of sugar sprinkles--
My mother curls her back over 
the calendar counting the days
until Christmas-- writing recipes 
in the smudge of batter 
and muttering prayers to the ghosts
of our family's bakers--
we have to speak in Italian if 
we want my great grandmother 
Gennari to bless the dough
with silent and unmentioned hints 
of anise and amoretti-- 
she speaks through our
finger in struffoli seance--
trigger-snap-- pan warp rapture
in the oven heat--
gun shoot and cookie cutter these
wrists into stars and angels--
We were made to be bakers-- made
to take pieces of our body dough--
lick the wood spoon and swollen
bowls of our sisters--
If the recipe cards
taught me anything it is that
good girls don't burn--
good girls rise and blush under 
the red coil or flatten out
their own bone spires to 
trace pizzelle patterns--
No one eats a burned cookie--
dumped out the window in disgrace
to girl-bodies-- did you sleep without wax
paper? Did you forget to brush
your face in butter before bed?
Oh what a shame to waste so much sugar--
sweep the broken sprinkles from
the kitchen floor and make them 
back into a plate--
My mother asked me to check the cookies
until they blushed --
naked and soft and golden brows--
crown these girls into women--
This is what our dough was meant for--
we learned from the smudges 
and chocolate stains of our
mothers and our mothers mothers
who defended ovens and brushed their
daughters with butter before they slept--
sewed wedding gowns with
the sugar from all the broken plates--
discharged all we had left of un-burned
skin in sprinkle bullet--dough evergreens and 
poinsettias-- these cookie 
press stars and snowflakes
teach us that there is such thing
as a shape worthy of butter
and sugar and one egg cracked
on the counter by your youngest child--
teach her she is already a spritz cookie
gun shot-- she always speaks Italian 
and sleep in a pizzelle press--
Cut her into a snowflake while
she sleep and wipe
the blood from her wrists--
this is violence and love and 
recipe cards-- fudge brick
and crush candy cane-- we'll
all grow up to own a spritz cookie
shotgun-- wipe it clean with an oven
mitt as we mark off days 
on a calendar from the kitchen table--
discharge ourselves and plant 
sugar beads in our foreheads--
ask our grandmother if she ever felt 
truly regal or if she always knew
she was only a reiteration of 
the same sugar and butter that made her--
waiting and waiting 
to burn and leave disgraced
out the back window.