the repeated but unreal seasons of pork chops with browned potatoes, peas, and Jell-O salad, the next night’s meatloaf with Spanish rice and green beans followed by fish sticks with scalloped potatoes and corn et cetera, always the same combinations back then, even Chinese would intimidate in dim rooms some at the edge of town on a Sunday night away from campus in the galleys of perdition, as if soy sauce would fix anything ketchup wouldn’t

after three months I recognized the true nature of dining hall menus in their two-week cycle of institutional perdition now I’ve revolted by way of vegetarian practice and straight from the garden gratitude for herbs and spices, sauces, flavored vinegar, pressed oils, the religious dimensions of feasting and fasting as well as prohibitions, there are reasons apart from snobbery no wines accompanied those dinners, after all, what do kids know and who would teach of goodness : as in what God saw as good, as in good to eat? and so it was, grace before vittles / sweet tasty dreams

under a busted shack or tongue of cocklebur she unearthed her own powdering honeycomb voicing nothing – through the ice, some observe private property, basketry over the window exposed as nutshells before straying that far from the wedding cake

perhaps you remember the one whose moon-eyed lovers were reflected within the ringing gravel } none of them yet the maid of honor or a best man’s cattle, hogs, goats grunt in discomfort, sniffing the usual rounds without any drum healing wounds at least only to burn away { somewhere in the distance

discard piles of weekly magazine employment classifieds . dirty dishtowels, need replacing . ditto, the car . boxes stuffed with working papers, political reprints from college and later stint as academic editor . one more career detour, Swami . save file folders for reuse . don’t need any extra expenses now . former jobs, like former loves . what can you do at the moment? rat out pigeons from under the eaves, their smell of warm barn rot . dust and mop . Ajax or Comet the bathroom sink, tub, bowl . remake the bed after slippery sheets expose toes to night chill . clean the parakeet cage, heart yearning for its owner . how I’d love to trade that old English bicycle, with its flat tire and second gear that strips out, get a sleek ten-speed . instead, you need new blue jeans and pour a fresh motor oil in the Subaru . indoors, lay a wood fire but don’t ignite kindling, the coy display to signal a homebuyer . not all of the ash of this failure is mine