What’s your favorite cookie? Is it gooey, fresh out of the oven? Does it have a sprinkle of sea salt on top?
My poem “Puberty cookies”, published in eff-able: a spicy anthology of queer crip poetry, describes a hilarious memory from my Jewish summer camp where we baked body- and genital-inspired cookies. I’ve been writing a collection of poems all about summer camp for several years. I’d love to share more of them with you soon, and hopefully the full book one day.
During eff-able’s online launch last month, other contributors and I shared our poems. You can read mine here:
Puberty cookies Dough sticks between our fingers as we knead on tables in the chadar ochel. We shape balls and tits, a long tube for a penis, a triangular shape for a vagina. We make marshmallow clits, place chocolate chips in the center of dough circles for nipples. Scatter sprinkles for pubes. We laugh, hold up trays with our creations. Our counselors take the lumpy dough into the kitchen, pop it in the oven. It transforms: balls mashed into penises, rhomboid-shaped vaginas. We devour our cookie bodies, savor them, as ugly and misshapen as could be.
The anthology is filled with beautiful, powerful, sexy poems by queer disabled writers. eff-able is a play on the word ineffable, something unutterable, inexpressible, indescribable, and also, fuckable. Buy the book, ask your local library to carry it, and read these poems!