"What's That Smell in the Kitchen?" by Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She was born in Detroit, Michigan on 31 March 1936. Her poetry tends to be free verse and deals with feminist and social concerns.

All over America women are burning dinners.
It's lambchops in Peoria; it's haddock
in Providence; it's steak in Chicago;
tofu delight in Big Sur; red
rice and beans in Dallas.
All over America women are burning
food they're supposed to bring with calico
smile on platters glittering like wax.
Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined,
but spewing out missiles of hot fat.
Carbonized despair presses like a clinker
from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.
If she wants to grill anything, it's
her husband spitted over a low fire.
If she wants to serve him anything
it's a dead rat with a bomb in its belly
ticking like the heart of an insomniac.
Her life is cooked and digested,
nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.
Look, she says, once I was roast duck
on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.
Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

Based on all that Marge Piercy stands for, it is somewhat difficult to determine who the speaker is in this poem. There is a strong and clear voice that seems to be Marge Piercy, so it is possible that in this case, Marge Piercy is the author and the speaker.
As a feminist, Marge Piercy is identifying the societal concept that women are supposed to serve others. She provides examples of food from across the nation: "lambchops in Peoria" references Illinois; "haddock in Providence" references East Coast cuisine; "steak in Chicago" references the Midwest; "tofu delight in Big Sur" identifies with California and the West Coast lifestyle; and "red rice and beans in Dallas" identifies the South. These examples help show that women burn dinner, regardless of what it is.
The anger she displays in this poem places focus on the stereotype that women must serve men because society says so. The intense imagery of plotting to kill husbands by barbecuing them or serving them poison spells vengeance.
Incompetence is the inability to do something successfully. The last line of this poem says that burning dinner is not being able to cook properly, but it is war. That's a drastic difference; incompetence involves ignorance or lack of a skill, whereas war involves intended violence. The entirety of the poem leads us to show that women can intentionally burn food because they are fighting against all that is expected of them as being a woman. Society has always stressed that wives are supposed to serve their husbands, and women will always be lower in class than men.
Marge Piercy, then, is personifying feminist ideas into a common occurrence: burning dinner.