The Food Groups


Meal 1

Honest to God!
Nobody is ever honest to god.
Because honesty is a great sin,
Like a crack in the shell of Momma Bird's baby boy
spilled into a searing pan.
God demands a sacrifice!
Your firstborn son.
Sonny-side up.
"But mom, I'm still hungry!"
"Oh, of course you are, Dear. You are a growing boy after all!"
Then some dribble of metabolism Ad nauseam,
And drool of uncooked yolk hanging from my lips,
My eyes feverishly seeking,
I want the yellowest bits,
I want the most colorful bites,
To forget there ever was
A “Caw” or “Coo” or “COCORICO” or “KUKAREKU” as it were,
What I recall on the sound they make,
Echoing, bellowed out from plastic speakers
On a toy,
“What sound does the Chicken make?”
The rooster’s cries are soothing tunes for children learning to read,
And in all my learning, questions remain:
“What sound does the human make?”

Meal 2

“Will that be for here or to go?”
Little did I know, I was responsible for burying my food.
I am handed the honor of choosing
A resting place, be it a greasy cornered table in a mall,
Or the air-freshened fabric seat of my car,
Or my very own dining table at home -
But stop myself short, reminded of the idiom,
“You don’t shit where you eat!”
And I stammer at the vile thought,
And look toward the sunken face of an attendant behind a plastic desk, and plastic register,
Plastic hat on his head, tarred and feathered and pranked by his boss
To ask strangers where they would like to take their dead pets,
Like some Jekyll and Hyde veterinarian.
And sputtering out the words, I recall his plain relief when I finally say,
“Here.”
A shuffling of feet, the next in line,
If what’s in my plate is a lamb to the slaughter,
Then why on Earth are we forming
Single
File
Lines
In some dingy mall, in some muggy town,
Where the difference between asphalt and air is so thin
As the appetite I now have.

Meal 3

We gather around the pit, itching for ceremony and sermon.
The accoutrements are dragged over the ears, the shoulders, the wrists.
Draped over a hard mat to keep the underlying skin clean,
It takes two people to adorn the mantle,
And we baptize our hands in holy water, or otherwise something soapy.
Warriors dressed, we tear our coifs and dangle them, flaccid, below our chins,
That we may leave no trace of victim on our pale pure nearly-exposed collarbones
(Nor honestly do we want to watch the food go down our throats).
Each at their own station, aligned and with aligned intent,
Yet asymmetrical ends are these.
A deep breath is followed by shallow words and blessings,
But I am aloof, too preoccupied to feel the weight of my armor,
Or to answer the call, “Amen.”

Silverware clashes under moon,
            Swordsman in violent dance,
                        No mention of war?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Shift

Today was the first day that I chose to sit in the shade. I'd gotten so used to having the sun on me that the darker side of things felt eerily cold. Though it was far from winter, I felt deeply shaken and unsettled, uprooted from comfort. The pillars around me provided stripes of cover much like trees in a forest. Above me was a canopy that these pillars held up, and tiny beams of sunlight peaked through to reach me. I chose to be patient today. I chose not to rush from building to building, from class to class, from failure to success, from expense to investment. I decided to take a moment and breathe - survey my surroundings. When I stopped and looked, under the wings of a shadowy sanctuary, I noticed the hundreds of people who bolted from Point-A to Point-C. I could hear the marching of their shoes, heels, slippers, and flats, all working in unison toward a cause unknown. I saw human beings swallowed up by piles of brick and concrete, only to later be regurgitated with newf...
Read more

So Shy

Watching over the people, the birds, the flowers, the trees. All dancing in the breathe of his lungs. He watches with eagerness and a desire to learn. A desire to see how they react to him. He watches their laughter, their tears, their footsteps, and yet he is unsure of how to approach. Perhaps he finds peace in keeping his distance, wondering and listening and hopeful of new events. Only when there are those who struggle does he come to intervene, but such a rare moment that is. And even then, once they are lifted off the hard ground, he recedes back into the shadows to resume his tenure as a ghost. Maybe he is indeed shy, afraid of what his presence might do, or perhaps believes himself incapable of facing his own machinations. He feels the wind and sun just as they do, but he feels such different ways - Unable to comprehend, to grasp their limits. He watches them grow old and die, and he seems sad because they are all so unique. They are all so beautiful, and yet he cannot a...
Read more

Just Garbage

Spring cleaning never gets easy. Sometimes you find that, year by year, one accumulates an impressionable amount of waste. This year was no different than the rest. In my hands was a trash bag, full and hefty with dusty displeasure. Even so, I felt the need to double-check the contents, otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing I might've thrown out an antique. The first object I found was a pair of sunglasses. I had gifted them to an ex-girlfriend a while back. She always wore shades, so I figured they were an appropriate present. Only when she broke up with me did she explain that wearing them was the best way to avoid eye contact with me. Beneath the glasses was a lead pencil, snapped in two. I had gotten into an argument with my father about how I would make a living. "You're 19 now," he'd say, "Time to get off your ass." I got so infuriated with him for not understanding and I crushed this pencil in between my fingers. He left i...
Read more