On Food
Processed beef, sesame seed bun, lettuce, diced onion, mystery sauce; deep fryer, red heat lamp, left out for hours at a time, crispy golden strips; halibut, cod, and drum mined mystery meat; safely cradled in a square cardboard box.
Beef, beans, sweet and spicy brown sauce, tortillas, forty-seven ways.
Square patties, bits scattered about the floor, thrown into the ten-gallon chili batch. Obesity rate?
On Love
What makes a princess? Is it her beauty, her woo, her fame, her fortune? What makes a prince? Is it his strength, his wit or lack there of, his rescue of his maiden? What is it that makes a princess tale? Is it the journey of the prince, the oppression of the damsel, the rescue from her lofted lodging?
And the princess paradigm exists. “Roy, you lazy prick, the car won’t start!” “I’m coming darling!”
I’m really enjoying On Food’s concrete and specific imagery. A thought: I feel like it would be more effective as a line-and-stanza poem than a prose poem.
ReplyDelete"On Food" not really prose poetry, not written in prose, a list of specific details (good) without verbs (not prose), without identifiable speaker (obese or not?)
ReplyDelete"On Love" is prose, so okay, a prose poem, but Princesses? Disney is making billions on the princess culture and now here too? But then a turn that might save this--we're not in some castle but some sap named Roy with a foul-mouthed wife and dead battery. This is where the story lies.
On Food is one of my favorite poems that I have read so far. It is extremely relevant and not hard to connect to; especially the "ten-gallon chili batch."
ReplyDeleteYour posts always have a sense of humor behind them which is something that I can appreciate when it's genuine.
ReplyDeleteI think I know what you're getting at in "On Love", it's like the comparison of the long-held cliche of women to princesses and men to princes which at some point I'm sure has made us all gag. But maybe some more of your humorous and interesting juxtaposition of ideal vs. reality would make the point more clear! Right now it kind of sits stagnant as a bored stereotype.