“Hello? Shanghai Garden? I’d like to place a take-out order, please.”

“What you like?”

“One order beef chow fun, one order kung pao chicken, and a double order of moo shu pork.”

“Name and phone numbah, please?”

“Jama Obama. 555-8888.”

“Okay, pick up in 15 minutes.”

I can hardly wait! You know how it goes. Sometimes you just gotta have those thin pancakes full of fried pork, scrambled eggs, tree ears, and lily buds. Oh, have I mentioned my life-long passion for chow fun?

photo by bionicgrrrl

Wide, flat noodles are my friend. As are those white cartons and wooden chopsticks! Those little packets of soy sauce. Everything all warm and cozy in a nice brown bag. Yay! I don’t have to cook dinner tonight! Chinese take-out, you’re more than just comfort food. After seducing my taste buds with all your fine flavors, you spell out my life in fortune cookies.

Prophecies, proverbs, advice, great one-liners — so concise and far reaching — just the right crack of poetry after plum sauce. I think it would be a fine thing to write fortunes for a living. Imagine the lives I could touch with just a few words! They would carry the weight of hopes, dreams, the future, maybe even change.

What’s that? You’re hungry?

Well then, here’s a very cool take-out poem for you, full of crisp, heady fortunes you’re going to want to bite into more than once (some of them appear in that first photo up there):

LINES FOR THE FORTUNE COOKIE
by Frank O’Hara


photo by inediblejewelry

I think you’re wonderful and so does everyone else.

Just as Jackie Kennedy had a baby boy, so will you — even bigger.

You will meet a tall beautiful blonde stranger, and you will not say hello. 

You will take a long trip and you will be very happy, though alone.

You will marry the first person who tells you your eyes are like scrambled eggs.

(Rest the rest here.)

Oh, I’ve written some fortunes just for you:

The lovely Anastasia Suen is hosting the Roundup today at Picture Book of the Day. When you see her, ask her if she’d like some kung pao.

Tasty tids:

The modern-day fortune cookie was actually invented by Japanese immigrants in California.

They are practically unheard of in Mainland China and Taiwan.

Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), once roomed with Edward Gorey at Harvard.

He was a music major, poet, playwright, art critic, and associate museum curator at MOMA, who died tragically at the age of 40 from injuries sustained in a car accident.

 

Oop! Gotta go. My order’s ready!