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I ate too much sorrow yesterday
the kitchen overflowed with savories
morsels impossible to ignore.
I feasted in the morning on scrambled
havoc, panic toasted and slathered with butter
twin towers of silver dollar pancakes
responding to the flash of a knife
and fork with fuck collapse
syrup everywhere
impossible to clean
gluing our hands to the table.
And then we couldn’t close eyes or mouths
as course after course came to table
and we devoured it, delectable details for dessert
indulgence indefensible indigestible
After the initial glut I learn to pace myself
A plateful of agony an hour
By evening, exhausted, we stare into soup
a confusion of images: vegetable rubble, smoke of bouillon
twisted gristle sheen showing our eyes staring back.
One face after another drowses forward
falls, and screaming and sputtering
shakes his soup-scalded forehead free
of the droplets.
We swear revenge upon the chefs
but we may as well resolve to punish
the people who pushed us into our bowls
We
ourselves
sat down to this supper.
This morning I ache
looking at the wreckage
of dirty dishes and spilled scraps
pots and pans scarred with burnt gore
this chaos in the heart of our home.
I ache, and aching ask my beloved
if we might do the dishes together
clean the kitchen together
find a way together
to be thankful
one day again
for the miracle of a meal.
©2001, John Kissingford
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The woman in the black Beemer
chats on her cell phone
as she pulls in the out lane
at the Whole Foods parking lot.
The car she nearly hits
a ’76 Chevy Nova
slams on its brakes and leans on the horn
but she doesn’t acknowledge
just pulls past
swinging into her lane
chatting.
In
AfghanistanBosniaChechnyaHaitiKashmirNicaraguaRwanda
SomaliaIrelandIsraelIraqIndonesia
and too many other places to list and ever finish
writing this poem their towers two have been
collapsing every day for decades.
Portabello mushrooms.
Organic lowfat vanilla yogurt.
eggs, rotini, and a loaf of sprouted wheat
—oh, and next door to Barnes and Nobles for a Mocha—
Odds and ends today—just odds and ends.
Thousands of people buried under rubble, families
destroyed, senseless slaughter daily. Daily. Here
today, instead of just everywhere.
If instead of putting on the brakes
the Nova had accelerated impulsively,
bonesplitting steel crumpled split cracked bloody
windshield
Listening to the revenge-obsessed news, I keep
wondering to what justice which perpetrators can be
brought when our own government has
SponsoredTrainedAidedAlliedourselveswithorBeen so many
brutal effective GuerrillaParamilitaryandMilitary
forces… we’ve been almost constantly at war, direct or
by proxy, usually in several places at once, for
longer than I’ve been alive.
The image: twisted metal crash
shattering glass marriage
of two cars two people
a BMWNova
in ecstatic embrace
an impossible empathy
And she puts her groceries in the trunk
her Starbucks in the cupholder
Speed dials
drives—
Never heard the honking.
©2001, John Kissingford
John Kissingford is a poet in Florida.
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