Beer and Onions
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.