by Jennifer Clark

When I manage to slip a steamy poem
into your mouth, serve you haiku on a spoon,
or flash you late at night some fiction,

you turn your head,
tighten lips. Your stomach
rumbles for something else.

How can I be
jealous of a me
that doesn’t exist—

a chef who creates courses
that entice your senses,
unleashes an appetite unbridled?

Alas, you married a writer
who whips up fares of phrases,
sautés sweet sentences,

dishes out stories, seasoned
with truths, peppered with lies,
and wants you to sample them all.

You pick at the prose,
push back your chair,
and feign fullness.

Why bother serving
the slice of story resting on the counter,
characters drizzled in misery?

I scrape poems into a pail
suck their juices off my fingers,
pleased to find they hold their warmth.

There are plenty of hungry people out there.
I keep forgetting that you, my love,
are not one of them.

---

 

Jennifer Clark lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her first book of poems, Necessary Clearings, was recently published by Shabda Press. Her work has been published in places like failbetter, Structo, Fiction Fix, The Midwest Quarterly, and Main Street Rag.