May 14 is National Buttermilk Biscuit Day. Biscuits have been popular in America since before the U.S. Civil War. Alexander P. Ashbourne patented the first biscuit cutter in 1875.

Willa Schneberg (1952 – ) American interdisciplinary artist and poet, author of four poetry collections: In The Margins Of The World, winner of the 2002 Oregon Book Award; Box Poems; Storytelling In Cambodia; and Rending the Garment.

If you’d like to read Willa Schneberg’s poem “Biscuits” click:

Biscuits

by Willa Schenberg

Mostly when I’m vacuuming the carpet
in Mr. Besdine’s office
I don’t worry, just do the work
and know I’ll be sleeping in my own bed
when all the desks in all them offices
will have people sitting around them.
Sometimes I don’t hear the vacuum cleaner
and I’m quiet like when I play
Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow
in the Mission Baptist Church.
There are other times I imagine fixing biscuits
unrolling my cloth from the coffee can,
flour still on it from the last time,
smoothing it out on the counter,
cloth white, flour white.
My mother’s biscuit cutter
made from an old Pet Milk can,
not a tack of rust on it,
presses in easy as a body to a hammock.
Some like biscuits and gravy,
I myself fancy biscuits with my homemade
muscadine jelly that comes from the
muscadine grape that grows wild.

“Biscuits” from In The Margins of The World, © 2000 by Willa Schneberg – Plain View Press