Death Recipe

Erica Shepperd’s, emotionally gripping poem, “Death Recipe,” begins with the refrain, “We eat like we’re still slaves.” Erica then describes the nutritional content of widely available junk foods in her neighborhood environment and her home, her ambivalence toward her young body and the functional limitations she now has as a result of her weight, her “addiction” to these sugary foods, and the connections between emotional and social trauma, corporate greed, and unhealthy eating. The poem culminates in a haunting catalogue of the clustering of early onset Type 2 diabetes in her family, and the resulting morbidity and mortality, ending with the final words, “…it’s like suicide.”