2007
Susan Luther
After the Feast
Hot. no, Percy, thou art dust,
And food for –
Prince. For worms, brace Percy . . . [I Henry IV: V. iv. 85-87]
You should write some (blank) verse about that,
a maven said, pointing to the mess inside
the steel basin on a roller cart
filled with the remains of lunch – beef hunks,
strawberry slices (Eew, don’t look at it,
a freaked-out poet mouthed), gibbets of rice,
butter, shards of rolls and chocolate cake,
gobbets of icing, lettuce, sugared nuts,
stalks and heads of cut asparagus, all
swilling in ice water, tea, gravy,
coffee, juice, a mucky broth decidedly
not sweet-and-sour, not meet enough to pleasure,
much less cleanse, the lingual or real palate
of any scribbler who’s just eaten or is eating
catered food along with (Win! Place! Lose)
awards conferred by judges judged
by sour grapes as daft, biased, crude
to favor those not talented, of course!
just lucky-duck insiders – a repulsive stew.
(But not, one might reply, to pigs, whose
tastebuds and sensibilities prefer
just such a disgraceful mixture, to them
nouvelle cuisine, a gourmet soup; to them
of hoof, four legs, tail, snout, who in their turn
as bacon, ham, ribs, barbeque, sausage
or chops are eagerly consumed as treat
supreme by humans whose clogged arteries
or other physical catastrophes
send them [us] to the festal board of nematodes
or other creatures that can feed despite,
or on those rare concoctions we’ve devised
to preserve ourselves – unless, like Egypt’s
classical embalmers, we’ve cured our mummies
so well with the perfumes of longevity
that they’re dug up at length by archaeologists
from some as yet blank earth or unsung world
to serve as science’s and history’s
brain food – until, unless future researchers
take care to keep us cool and unexposed,
like the Siberian Ice Maiden, we begin
to vanish – or do vanish – into time’s
rumbling stomach, the hollowed jaws of air)
Author’s Bio:
SUSAN LUTHER is a native of Nebraska and has lived in her mother’s home region of the South nearly all her adult life. Formerly a member of the editorial board of POEM magazine and of the founding board of directors of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, she has taught in college and university as well as community settings, which she prefers. Her print publications include a monograph on Coleridge, two chapbooks and a full-length book of poems as well as individual articles and poems in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. This is her first Web publication.