Poem a Day December #5

Beer and Onions

(After Billy Collins’s Poetry Broadcast

December 4, 2020 at the 19 min. Mark)

If Billy Collins’s poetry

is Kobe steak cooked perfectly,

browned and crunchy on the outside,

pink and juicy as it dances on your tongue,

I can only imagine how my own work

tastes and feels in your mouth.

I would say beer and onions

or liver with red wine,

but that would just be me lifting morsels

off the king’s plate, a crime

whose punishment

is death by catapult.

No, the meal of my writing is more like

an entree of glue and wood chips,

or dog shit and peanut butter,

with an appetizer of mealworm,

a salad of carpet fibers and lint

and a puke purée tartlet for dessert.

What I mean to say is, my writing will leave

you shaking and in tears, your tongue running

for cover, your stomach somersaulting beneath

your shirt, your heart pounding nails

through your chest, all your senses heightened,

but not in a good way.