My Mother's Recipe for Caldo de Pollo

27 October 2026

My mother's recipe has no measurements, only gestures: a palm of salt, a handful meaning however much your hand happens to hold that day, which is not a stable unit of measurement, which is the entire problem with trying to write any of this down. I have tried for years to translate her kitchen into something a stranger could follow, and every time I fail at the exact same place: the moment she tastes the broth and adjusts it by something other than taste, some private arithmetic involving who is coming to dinner, what kind of day everyone has had, whether anyone needs forgiving. You cannot measure that. I have her handwriting on an index card that says simply "hasta que esté bueno," until it's good, and I used to think that was her being imprecise, and now, older, standing in my own kitchen guessing, I understand it was the only honest instruction she ever could have given me.

About the prose poemA poem set as a block of prose, with no line breaks.

A prose poem looks like a paragraph and is written in sentences, without line breaks. It still works as a poem, through image, rhythm, sound and compression. Without the line break to shape its pace, the sentences carry it.

The shape Written in sentences, set as a paragraph, with no line breaks.

Listen for How sentences, rather than line breaks, set the pace and where the poem pauses.

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Marisol Vega

@marisol

I don't really follow rules, I go where my heart takes me.

8 poems · 6 readings received · 9 written · 0 followers

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Readings (2)

Nadia Osei27 October 2026

"Hasta que esté bueno" IS the poem, you knew it and wrote the rest of the sentence around it anyway, and honestly that was the right call. Some instructions only work in the language they were actually handed to you in.

Marisol Vega27 October 2026

That's the exact part I still can't fix! Every single time I think I've finally cracked the translation I make the soup and it's close, it's just not IT, you know?

Dawit Bekele27 October 2026

My mother never wrote anything down either, just repeated it until it stuck or it didn't. You got the harder version though, the half-written kind you have to keep guessing at forever. We're both just out here inheriting homework.

Marisol Vega27 October 2026

"Inheriting homework" is exactly right and also kind of devastating, Dawit, I'm stealing that phrase forever. At least yours stuck. Mine's still due.

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