Beef Stroganoff; a poem and zine about love and fear

Beef Stroganoff

My father’s favorite freeze-dried backpacking meal
For years
Was beef stroganoff
Until the fateful day he realized
It contained mushrooms.
And a lifetime prejudice against all fungi provisions
In that frigid moment of revelation
Divorced it
Instantly from his hiker’s pantry
Never to be eaten again. 

And perhaps the real tragedy—
He would never seek reconciliation
For the decade of fireside indulgences
Scooped giddily from steaming zipper pouches
And washed down with chai and chocolate.
As if a long-time female lover
Had suddenly been discovered a man
Or Bruce Willis a ghost,
And to allow love to transform fear
In a moment of relative inconsequence
Was too much to bear.

Amory Abbott, 2018

A few years ago I wrote this poem about how my dad didn’t like mushrooms. It was perplexing and funny and a little bittersweet, and felt like a microcosm of many of our human idiosyncrasies– confronting, sometimes unexpectedly, the realization that a long-held belief, opinion, bias, or tradition does not match our lived experiences and may wholly contradict it. We have a choice in that moment to retreat into our familiar and safe limits, or leap into an unknown new relationship with something that sparks joy. This instance concerning my dad was obviously not of any great consequence, based more on the preference of culinary tase (and perhaps influenced by past experiences), and I tried to approach the deeper shared experience through a humorous and harmless memory. Eventually the poem felt like good structure for an illustrated zine, so here it is.

I used a mixture of hand written elements, scanned fodder, photo collage, and digital drawing to make it.

…and Dad, if you’re reading this: I love you and wholeheartedly support your happiness whatever it may be, with or without mushrooms. Hope this isn’t too embarrassing. 🍄💚🍄💚🍄