"The Joy of Cooking" - Elaine Magarrell

I am so happy this is the figurative language chapter, because otherwise I would take this poem as repulsive. So the problem with this poem is that I have no idea what the "sister's tongue" or "brother's heart" resemble, since they are obviously not literally those things. I'm especially unsure of what to make of lines 15-16:"Although beef heart serves six my brother's heart barely feeds two."Ithought this was a bit of juxtaposition, because the siblings' parts are described in detail in (quite disgusting, if I do say so myself) cooking methods, and the essay says "beef heart," not "cow heart," - it seemed to me that the author was trying to create a barbaric, cannibalistic effect there, because why would she go into detail describing how to cook ehr family and not an animal?

 I also interpreted the parts that were being cooked as to the characters' personalities. he sister's tongue "will probably grow back" probably means that she is talkative, a bit fresh, or has a problem with authority. The brother's heart "needs an appel-onion stuffing to make it interesting at all" probably means that he is a mean, cold, or unthoughtful person.