Baba ganoush

If you had many a plate of this delicious concoction,
what would you call the plural?
Babas ganoush?
Baba ganoushes?
Baba ganeesh?

If, by some delightful accident, you add some chocolate to it,
would it become
baba ganache?

And if it turned out so good that you worshipped it as a purveyor of new beginnings,
would you then call it
baba ganesha,
with its many arms pointing to even more permutations of itself?

The father of all eggplants should be named
baba,
yes, alright,
but what if there were gentler ones with milder yet stronger overtones?
Would that then make
mama ganoush?

And if perverse explorations of sweet syrup and garlic gave rise to
new franken-tastes, would you be willing to try your luck with
rum baba ganoush
with its eggplant core in suspended animation amid the usual formaldehyde soaked cake?

.

She toils through the mound of charred eggplants
like Marie Curie did through that veritable hill of ore
to extract the precious glowing substance,
and announces the success of the operation with an eggplant emoji
—used, for once, for the right prerogative—
promising me the gift of a taste
worthy of the Nobel Prize on Eggplants.

Perhaps, there is a personal
ganoush
for each of us, no matter how pampered we wish to be
and how mischievous our inner demons become
— non est disputandum and all that.
For you and I, a safe space among the dishes,
as well as a playground for our inner children,
built out of whimsy
one stray garlic at a time.

Melih Sener