Photograph by Grace Gilbert
The First Pancake
Kate Walz
You always throw the first pancake out
That’s what my mom told me her mom told her
I’ve never done it though because, why waste perfectly good food?
She must have told me this for an important reason, she must have, she must have.
In English class they are always telling me there is something more than the words on the page,
And now I can’t help but think of everything that way.‘
It’s really getting to me.’
Always throw the first pancake out
I’m never quite sure if the pancake is done until I flip it over,
and by then it’s too late
But never mind that
because I think I figured out what she means, she means, she means
Or maybe she means nothing at all and my English teachers told me the story all wrong
Throw the first pancake out,
I know, I know, I’m going to!
But why throw out perfectly good food?
Holden Caulfield would tell me because it’s a phony.
Gatsby is so rich, he’ll have a whole other case in the kitchen, and won’t care unless his beloved
Daisy is there to share them with him in his large, billowing house.
He would do anything for her, you know.
Why throw it out when there are people starving in China and Africa and Charlottesville,Virginia?
The first pancake,
I always thought it was the best one.
The one you secretly eat to “make sure the batch isn’t poison,”
and maybe you spread some sweet jam or gooey honey on it
while your Dad sits on the couch, eyes glazed over in his morning stupor, watching the news,
and your Mom hovers nearby, feigning busyness to make sure you don’t burn the other ones.
She doesn’t care about the first one though, you’re supposed to throw that one out.
Yet the first one is completely yours,
you made it, with your own two hands,
and it turned out just fine.
If I’m being honest here, I don’t know what my mom meant when she told me to ‘always throw
the first pancake out,’
But I know what I want it to mean,
I want it to reconcile my lost feelings about a boy, billowing out of the tailpipe of a car as it
warms up on a cold January morning out into the atmosphere
Because this new one is either too dim witted to notice me or doesn’t care
Either way, I feel like an engine when a desperate driver floors the gas pedal in park
All this effort and time and thought wasted on a car that’s going nowhere
Besides, I’m supposed to be a strong, smart, independent woman
So I know what I have to do
I must throw the first pancake out