This Lady is Sick - Poetry Blog 4 (The Joy of Cooking)

When you first read The Joy of Cooking by Elaine Magarrel, you may cringe in response to the grotesque methods of the narrator. However, Magarrel's "[scrubbing] and [skinning]" of her sister's tongue is not literal. The tongue is her sister's words, her ideas and thoughts. When the narrator is preparing her "tongue" in a dish, she is actually degrading her thoughts, dreams, opinions, etc.; she is destroying them. Like the tongue, her brother's heart represents something intangible. His heart is her brother's ability to give love. However, when she describes it as "firm" and "dry," she means that he is a cold person. Her brother puts up a tough front, or he just is a mean person who seems to lack emotion. Either way, the narrator is insulting her sister's ideas and her brother's personality.