She was a mighty cook, Rhea, a potent slinger of everything plant, foul, meat or fish, an epicure of

both ancient and modern gastromonies, a baker of every puff and pie, a cornucopic culinarian, a
roaster, a poacher, a currier, a soup and sausage maker, a sybaritic gourmand whose every dish
was a sight to behold.

This kitchen was hers in the way the den downstairs was his. But not just in the sense that this was
the special room where she worked and cooked and created. No, for she was far from the domestic
sort of wife, and she had made this room and in so making it she had made it hers. In a sense there
were more things of a personal nature of hers here than in the bathroom that he dared not use, more
secrets tucked in drawers and cabinet cubbies than in the room off the living room that she used as
her study. He came into the kitchen often, seeking a snack, a glass of chilled water, a breakfast that
he always made and ate himself since Rhea awoke hours after him; but he always entered as if
crossing into a foreign land, a forbidden chamber, stepping into a strange city of peculiar customs,
unsure of the meaning of even the most ordinary things. He felt disoriented, he felt small as if he
were indeed intruding upon the land of a giant, a giant who wielded these things usually so ordinary
in a manner that could hardly be understood.

His feelings of diminution were not the result solely of her culinary skills, she was a mightier woman
than that. For she was also a foister of buildings, a trampler and coddler of space, a sculptor who
wrought the most habitable parts of the world from concrete, steel and wood. She did what normally
men were thought to do: she moved mountains of earth, she dug terrible holes far beneath the
ground, she raised monstrous skeletons of steel high into the air and covered her creatures with
glass and stone, she broke up and recollected space with godlike abandon. Her imagination was
threaded on the very physics and forces of her weighty projects. She saw more things in a void than

he glimpsed in the clutter of his mind. From her hands he saw the dreams of men arise out of iron
beams and sheets of glass, he saw the masculine forces of the world stir into being with a womans
gentler hand. Unlike most men, she had the inner power of rebirth; she could rebuild any landscape,
all by herself, that was the power she had in her command. When she decided to begin the
remodeling of this home nearly a decade ago, she began in the kitchen. She did not simply paint
and decorate, she transformed: for she was not afraid. She tore down everything, the entire grease
stained, finger printed, food spotted, age sotted, soot dusted past. She tore out the kitchens old and
tired soul and then with the power of a goddess she began the process of giving it a new one. This
kitchen was tiny, a small room in a small prefabricated house. But she rebuilt this kitchen as one
would imagine the reconstruction of a city leveled to ash, bringing from the barest landscape new
structure, new design, new life. She carved out essential pathways, she forged new flumes for water
and conduits for electricity and yes, she broke open the skies and exposed the heavens for she was
fearless and desired the light by day and the stony sheen of the moon at night. She redid the floors
with bamboo, as hard and shiny as a polished tortoise shell. She built an island out of marble and
heavy timber where there had been nothing but barren space, she carved clean new cabinets and
graciously slatted new shelves into the walls. For the walls she chose a gritty amber trimmed at the
baseboards with a dung colored brown as deep and rich as the earth, while she created open
spaces of robinsegg blue panels below the ceilings: a blue that brought the heavens closer to her:
for she was not afraid. Cast iron pits hung like dark moons from heavy metal hooks. Spot lights
burst into flame like stars around the skylight in the center of the ceiling. She selected a stove of
carbon grey that emitted arcs of blue flames that quickly warmed the entire kitchen, while a subzero
refrigerator when opened lazily unfurled its arctic winds in cirrus blankets to the floor.

The stew pot was simmering, steaming atop the stove. There were still soap suds on the sponge,
although deflated now like a pile of ash battered by the rain. She had left before cleaning all the pots
and cutting boards, knives and peelers she had used to prepare this meal. Empty cans of beef
broth, diced tomatoes had been rinsed and carefully arranged along the opposite side of the sink

where a metal basket held the smaller copper bottom pots and skillet that she washed after using
them in her preparations. There was a parquet cutting board stained with the green from a
chlorophyllic plant, basil no doubt, that she had minced before adding it to the stew. One large knife
on the side of the sink was coated with a milky scum, the dried slime of raw potatoes.
He lifted a hip and farted a whistling toot wherefore my bowels shall sound like a harp for Moab
when suddenly he realized he could no longer smell a thing: the multitude of smells in this room
cancelled each other out, he was amidst the white noise of smell, the white light of odor, all present,
all mingled perfectly into a shining perfectly odorless all. Even his own contribution offered not even
a hint of color, not even a slight shadow. He rubbed his tired eyes.
This room was all hers: her design, her organization, her ideas, her work: the cabinets of distressed
bone white lacquer, the black wrought iron shelves, the hooks on which hung the heavy iron skillets,
the shiny stainless pots. Many things could have been done to improve this space, but she had
sought to save not the original design but the original restrictions this space had placed on human
activity for more than a century, she felt she could not free her sprit while earlier sprits still
languished under memories they could not cast off. She had saved the original leaded windows that
let you see the world through a stream of tears, recast them in window frames, painted a faded blue
with a texture of powder. She had moved a wall here and made room for the subzero fridge but kept
the low ceilings. She had kept the sink beneath the windows but elevated the floor between the
island and the sink so that she could stand like a conductor while she prepared the meal, looking
down upon her vegetables, her hunks of animal meat, the fistfuls of herbs, spices and weeds she
gathered from her garden or purchased from the hot greenhouses of local farmers. Whether he was
down in his den or standing here in the kitchen watching her, she strolled always above him, had to
shout down to speak to him, ruled him from above.

Although you had no friends in this town where you lived with his wife, you felt the need to leave
anyway. A feeling that you were castrated in a place where horses and cows were castrated daily,

their bleating cries I said of mirth what does it accomplish? followed by their bloody balls falling
into buckets of ice water where they were kept before being sliced, battered and fried. You did not
want to be the village eunuch he that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off,
shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD no congregation would accept you, but she, Rhea
did. She was a young architect who had come to one of your evening adult classes for a leisurely
read of Joyce. She stared at you like a young college girl, but unlike the young college girl she gave
you a stiffie which would have been an embarrassment if only it had been noticeable. She stared at
you, raised her hand to ask not unintelligent questions while shifting her legs beneath her desk,
talked with you after class about much more intelligent observations that she was afraid would not
be received as intelligent by the others in the class, touched your hand one day after you had given
her the graded midterm, and eventually kissed you next to a garbage bin where you both had
ducked to avoid anyone seeing you one night after class. You knew it was a mediocre affair for her,
but for you it was wild and onanic for she reminded him of your sister, the sister who lived with a
postal worker and had a vocabulary built from game shows. Rhea she was your student, but was
she your girlfriend? Was this permissible? She was your paramour, at least in your mind, your
mistress, so you dreamed and even masturbated over as if to make sure (and this was romantic)
your seed was lost to a dirty sock or floated like snot, like opaque dreams down the shower drain
would later learn of your first wife and only then would she wonder had this all been a mistake, had
she picked the wrong college professor, had she stepped onto the wrong train ride of love.
While in the kitchen by himself (he could not bear to look let alone think about anything if she were
present, it did not seem right, and if she caught him, then all would be lost in that small but fatal
humiliation) he liked to stand between the stove and the counters, feeling the sense of being a
stranger in this place well up in him like the static from a nearby electrical tower. Yet at the same
time he felt warm, welcome here, welcomed by her, as if he had been outside all this time and she
had taken him in. It was true (to whom? and why?) that the kitchen was like a womb, it was personal
yet bore a very impersonal task, the nurturing and birthing of another being, of many beings, it

warmed and cradled, it cloistered and resonated with the voice and song and mindless chattering of
the mother being, its function was formed around food, nourishment, it fed, it gave substance to
others veins, it filled their alimentary tracks, it induced sleep through it sumptuous trytophanic
feasts, it emboldened and infused giddiness through its wine and beer, it stirred the brain with its
sugary treats, ice creams, hand pulled taffies and bread puddings.

RHEAS RECIPES

jugged hare
battered trotters
crubeens jubilee
haggis
head cheese with cocks comb
hog maw chowder
cabeza with cranberries
hard tripe sausage mammaries
pigs jowls with greens
caulfat on toast
lamb tongue with tomato sauce
grilled gizzards and onions
beef lung in calfs head casserole devilled kidneys
lights with lemon mayonnaise
pigs snout with savory beans
lamb fries
rocky mountain oysters
sweet bread souffle

faggots and gravy

pigs lips with pistachios
quinto quarto
ris de veau
green apple scrapple
drisheen and garbanzo beans
pigs feet with bananas
packet & tripe
livermush a la puta
pomoni di vitello confagioli
German sour lung soup
beef cheeks in neats foot brawn
beef brains in lemon sauce
mixed organ stew with beef blood
cowboy soup with beef heart
marrow fritters
batter fired mesentery
pig scrap soup
sheeps udder mixed grill
stuffed sows udders kid
pigeon puton palate
spleen firepot sweet bread with frog legs
son of a bitch stew
stuffed calves eyes
catfish balls
cow heel risotto
stuffed dormouse

duck blood soup

roasted field mice
flaming kidneys
golden calf testicles
fermented horse milk
herring sperm with cream
jugged pigeon
lambs brain neopolitan style
friend lambs pluck
middles pie
mock turtle soup
possum calalou
oxtail and peanut soup
pigs brain puffed pastry cups
omentum in flead pastry
squirrel ravioli and prosciutto
son of a bitch stew with rennin curled milk
turkey testicles a la Rosenwald
veal shins Milanese style
Yet he knew her actual womb, so he thought, better and more intimately than this one, this room,
where he now stood. She did not fall in love with him, no, that is not what happened after that night
by the garbage dumpsters, that is not what happened during those days when he read to her from
Rilke or allowed her to read something he wrote while he sat quietly trembling but outwardly
indifferent. That is not what happened when they first made love, as that was a disaster which
caused her to actually laugh at him before using her fingers to finish herself off and then using the
same hand to do him since he could not manage any other way. No, to have this woman required

more than making her fall in love with him, he had to go further than simply convincing her that he
was brilliant, a visionary, he would never have succeeded had he relied on making her laugh, as he
rarely did that on purpose. No, to make this woman his, he had to conquer her cunt. And like all
heroic feats that have been put to song or recorded in manuscripts, he had to do this lacking all the
necessary tools. To begin with, his fingers were far too short, stubby and insensitive to truly explore
the ribbed walls of her deep and sinewy vagina let alone find that mysterious spot of flesh inside.
Nor could he successfully deliver the proper lightness or frequency of strokes to her man in the
boat, a vibrating dildo became their mnage a trois, a clattering that he was sure he heard on many
a morning when he was downstairs making his tea and warming his scone. His tongue was little
better than a dry sponge, besides she had soon stopped his wagging attempts to lick her and so his
fantasy of tasting her through the monthly phases never came to be and soon he never thought
about it at all. Finally, his penis was, as has been mentioned more than once, a bit on the short side.
His fattening stomach took what inch or two he had to spare and so it served more as a point where
she sought orientation to rock her hips rather than as a fat long pole on which to spin and sway and
bounce and pummel her cunt as he often thought she wished. He had to conquer her cunt without
the massive meatbone in those movies, without the unwavering wood that could pound and
penetrate for hours, without the skills of those fags who went down on women with robotic tongues
for money, without the eager and delighted hungriness that one woman displayed on another. He
had to go further, do more if he was to conquer her cunt. And that was his only hope to have this
woman. She had a heart that was kind and large, generous and giving, she would give that to him
but that would not make her his. She had a mind that he soon realized was sharper and perhaps
even more capable than his, one that could not be intimidated, one that offered more to him than he
was ever capable of offering to her, one that grew sharper as she grew older, unlike his which he
was sure looked now like well-aged swiss cheese, all those holes where names and places and
thoughts from yesterday or even just a few hours ago had fallen unrecoverable into forgetfulness. He
had no money, he had no future. He gave her a child, but that was only because some sperm had
leaked inside her slit, not because they had planned or wanted one. He could not cook, his few

attempts to make her breakfast in bed were ruined either by a fart she had released while he was
preparing her tea, or by food he had prepared that more properly belonged as one of those plastic
looking displays in the windows of certain cheap restaurants.
So how did he do this? How did he domesticate her? How did he accomplish such a feat when in
reality there was nothing in his power or physical being that would have even suggested he could
succeed? To be honest, he did not know himself. But he believed he had conquered her cunt and
that was good enough for him. The problem of course is that the conquered never stays the
conqueree, the conqueree must always be repeatedly and unforgivingly reconquered, and so kept in
its conquered state or else it will seize its freedom during any of these attempts and be gone. As his
understanding of how he had conquered her cunt in the first place was suspect, his confidence in
being able to reconquer her cunt over the years, over the decades now, was quite laughable. In fact,
as he had aged he could not help but notice that what little function he had was dwindling further
away, like the rabbit in Alice,

he was
shrinking away,
vanishing into a hole
below his

.
belly

Yet she was gaining in the very things he was losing. For so long he struggled to keep up, but
eventually he knew his task was a helpless one, she was far out ahead of him now, her cunt had
taken the lead and was not looking back, not even a glance or a wave, her cunt was racing on faster
and faster towards a goal he would never know.

I weep for the cunt of my Rhea

Who told me: I can no longer see ya
You dick is so thin
I cant tell if its in
When I come I only go pee-a

So the truth was: what did he have to offer her? He had nothing of any interest any longer to her
mind. She had expanded beyond him in this capacity too, she was constantly outside, on the go,
meeting with groups of friends, going to stage productions at the church, art shows at public
libraries, lectures by two bit professors or defunct politicians. She took classes at the local
community college (how she had met him), took tennis lessons with a young French flirt, was
learning how to tango (doesnt that require a partner?) and was getting her third (or fourth) certificate
in gourmet cooking (which she never performed for him alone). All the while he sat in his study, sunk
deep in his hole, writing the book that would never be written, doing the things that would never be
discussed, not at dinner (when there was dinner) not when friends gathered (they were all ashamed
to ask) not at birthdays or weddings (which he no longer attended) or even funerals, the one
appropriate time, he thought, when my work should be brought up.
My true love has a cunt like a canyon
But only cuz my dick is a wan one
I give it my best
But my best is a jest
I give her my all
But I dont have the balls
So Instead I give tongue
But she says it's no fun

To be licked when she needs to be rammed some

O poor Gass, he was dealt a multitude of tasks by his wife such that each one was greater and more
burdensome than the other, these tasks written on a white board in the kitchen here, each task
wrapped in a bubble of a different color marker and connected to center circle which was Gass
himself, creating the image of a nine headed hydra which could only be slain by taking care of one
head at a time. It was indeed a terrifying portrait to look upon, as each task had its own measure of
danger, onerousness and risk to his plump, old and fragile being. The first task was a terrible
example of these very concerns. For he was to sweep the snow from the steps and the landing
outside before it iced over and formed an icy walkway that would then establish itself for the rest of
the winter, becoming as it had in winters prior a glacier of ice and snow that would hinder if not
completely block any who dared to traverse its thickening slab. Three red lines underlining this task
and three bold red exclamation marks next to the bubble clearly indicated that there was no time to
waste as each recent storm had deposited its layers of snow and the mighty glacier was soon to
achieve its rigidity and permanence. This was a task that would require him to take in his hands a
great broom and flail away at the massive hills of snow, it would require sweeps as strong and wide
as would touch tree top to tree top, it would require efforts that would send that broom in long arcs
like a scythe scratching sky, snow and then sky, as he swept what had become mountains of snow
to the east and to the west uncovering the concrete of their solitary path, one step at a time, until
with the mightiest sweeps of all he would pass his mighty broom across the landing six, seven, eight
times until it too was clean so that neither she nor any other giantess might slip or fall. Such was the
first all important task but as he stared back at the icy face of winter, the terrible breaths of polar
cold, the snow flung this way and that like tiny knives, he shook his head and muttered that this task
would not be done today.
The second task at first seemed easier and well within his capabilities as well as his current
temperament. He was to replace the empty toilet roll with a full and fluffy roll of toilet paper, a task he

should have completed when the remaining roll was emptied by him as he was a major consumer of
toilet paper, especially to complete the wiping a derriere as wide and broad and convoluted, so to
speak, as his. All he would have needed to do at the timely moment would have been to go to the
pantry and grab a fresh roll of tp, come back and reload the contraption next to the toilet. But it was
easier to grab a box of Kleenex from the bedroom and the business section of the newspaper as
back up, so that he was satisfied that he would not need to complete this task today. The second
head could be removed.

The third task was none other than to close the chimney flue which he was to do before some great
bird or furry beast dropped down belly first into the house. This involved getting down on his knees,
rolling over onto his back and then arching up and with his pudgy arms and little hands grabbing the
soot coated lever that controlled the flue and risk dust in his nose, mouth and eyes by bringing it
down. No, without Rhea here he was not about to put himself in a position where he could not
recover and be left prostrate on the cold tile in front of the fireplace vulnerable to falling soot, the shit
of varmints, the cold blasts of winter and of course the claws and fangs of the animals she so feared
would drop through the chimney. So this task would not be completed today either. The fourth of his
tasks was to clean and refresh the litterbox in which the grandma pussy dropped her soils and
leaked her waters, a most onerous task, one which involved scooping and troweling through the dry
quicksand, and brought to his mind the tang of kidney meat and the wetted pants of an eater of inner
organs. The fact was, he had seen grandma pussy squatted purposefully in the dirt of the potted
plant in the living room and he had investigated and found pawfuls of black earth tossed in every
which direction from the pot onto the ground. So Grandma Kitty was clearly not using her quicksand
and so it did not need to be changed, not today anyway. That head too could be removed.
His fifth task drawn upon the board was to find his wallet so that he could maneuver the streets in
the car without fear of fine or internment. This task he knew to be futile one and so he chose to
ignore this one, allowing the role of chance to help him in this chore. The sixth task was to change
the oil in the car which was not possible since it was neither here, Rhea had taken it on her errands,

nor could he drive the vehicle without the license in his lost wallet. The seventh task was to kill the
rat that plagued the basement, a pestilence which threatened them with pox, scurvy, measles, flu,
malaria, tendinitis, rheumatism, typhoid, gout, ulcer and encephalitis, but he said, however true it is
that these ailments could be blamed, he said, on a rodent, he said, we have grandma pussy, he
said, who must be given the chance, he said, to kill the rat, he said. That is her job. Whereupon
satisfied he then looked to the eighth task on the list which had long been a challenge and had long
remained on this list once having been seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, even first yet he
was being called upon again to fulfill this task which was none other than to call his mother of 102
years of age, and so he walked to the kitchen sink, opened the window to allow the wintry cold to
rush in, and against that fury with a fury resolute of his own he cast a loud yell out across backyard,

mommm

mm a shout that carried across the wintry field of broken stalks, the icy lakes like

smooth scabs on the earth, the rivers like cracks in a old skull, across mountains, over deserts,
through valleys, over iron red hills, slicing through stands of fir trees, ripping through the feathered
wings of high flying eagles, thundering under the bellies of low lying lizards, halting the military
march of ants, shuddering back up through flocks of migratory fowl, until falling like wet and sodden

leaves soundlessly and ineffectually

mommmmm

m at an assisted living facility in Oceanside

California where the old woman whimpered as she waited to be moved from her left side to her right
side so that her new sores could scab over and stop ruining the sheets.
These tasks are designed but to madden me, he said closing the window, but to jiggle and jigger and
jangle my mental facilities, he said, they are an attempt but to shudder and shake, to plunder and
quake, to burden and flake my manhood, he said, for these tasks are either but simple menials any
imbecile can do or else they are but impossible tests that produce improbable results. And my point,
he said, is best demonstrated by the last and ninth of this task, this last task asking me to unclog the
upstairs toilet, the toilet that I use and so the toilet that must be stopped up with my turd, not hers.

On the floor near the door to the garage, on top of a plastic garbage bag, she had laid out the rotorooter, the device that looked like a serpent, a three headed serpent, at one end the three heads
broke off the metal body, each of the three heads with its own mouth of metal teeth, the jaws and
teeth that would grind their way through the hairy sludge and frozen turds and clear out the pipes so
that water could flow again. As the stench from his bathroom grew stronger and stronger as he did
not cease to use the toilet for his morning urinal, afraid to wait to get down the stair and not daring to
use her bathroom (you missed the toilet again Gass!) the pressure to complete this task grew, and
was a constant in their life while she was here. Yet he hesitated, he knew not really why, but he was
afraid of the metal snake, the three heads of little jaws and teeth, he feared what it would find once it
began to devour its way down that pipe, he know he would never be able to bring it back to the
toilets surface, that he would have to call her to retrieve the metal beast, that he would be found by
her standing back against the bathroom door, looking helplessly at the metal snake half submerged
into the stool darkened waters and that he would be helpless as he would watch her retrieve the
snake, pull up the three heads and so discover what it had found in those terrible depths. And so
there was no way was he going to do this task. Then hire someone, she would yell. Sure, he said,
hire someone so that they may get on their knees and dig into a toilet bowl up to their elbows and
pull out our week old turd. It is your turd, she would yell back. He couldnt do it. So she took to
closing his bathroom door and shouting at him throughout the day to do this task. And he wrapped
the metal serpent back into its black skin and tossed it like a dead beast into the darkness of the
garage.
And so he realized that perhaps this list of things that for the most part could never be accomplished
were but a way for his wife to drain the last vestiges of sanity from his mind, for there were not many
vestiges left, whatever those may be, and like fingers grasping a crag upon a cliff she was pulling
then off one by one until she had pulled off nine in all, leaving one finger grasping the crag from
which he hung and clung to what he had until she would raise her heel and bring it down with a
thumpering but wait! Here, this bit of Kleenex, wadded and in its center hard bits of dried blood,

like seeds in the white flesh? Where was she? She was gone, he was free , and all this time he
had wasted while she was gone. Where had she gone? What had happened? Could he have?
Had he? Did she ? Was it possible that in the blackness that precedes this moment he had?
Could he have had.? Where was she?

Nooooooooo! The winds howled but the sun shone outside for the first time, rainbows in the
prisms of leaded glass. He looked out the window at the farmhouses and barns anchored to the
horizon, silent ships dark upon a sea of fallow land. Of course, he had not He was being foolish.
She could not be And he would never do such a thing as She was the one who would save
him, he said, she was the only one he could count on, to be there, now, then, whenever. It was she.
She-a. O Rhe-a. Doesnt cum, only pee-as.

Must clear the mind. Take a walk. Damn the cold.