A Small Fight Involving Sheep Cheese
Sometimes it takes a meat hook,
well actually two of them, to keep
my mind open. I am sorry
about the dishes and the butter,
too many cooks and all that,
but, you see, my big concern
is that you will grow tired of me
before I die. So please, if you would,
feel free to find new and inventive
ways to keep my ears from closing,
my eyes from shutting, my fool mouth
from speaking. Please grab whatever
funnel is closest and pour the world
down my throat and humble me.
It’s funny, but even standing next to
a tree, I sometimes feel tall. Perhaps
a cartoon mallet is in order.
What I’m saying to you right now
is that I like it when you are frank.
I got mad about the dishes–you at me
because I told you to put the butter
in the pasta when it was your recipe.
I had never had sheep cheese
and vermicelli before; I did not know.
Please see that more foolish things
have slipped from men’s mouths,
like: I am leaving forever
and I never liked you much, anyway,
come to mind. But I’ll save you
those old stories and instead admit
I am clay and malleable, that
things like this throw me
back on the wheel, spinning.
Sean Conrey‘s poems have either appeared or are forthcoming in Permafrost and Another Chicago Magazine. As an undergraduate he studied poetry at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI and in 2002 he completed an MFA in poetry at Purdue. He is currently working on a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition at Purdue.
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Dip”te*ra — An extensive order of insects having only two functional wings and two balancers, as the house fly, mosquito, etc. They have a suctorial proboscis, often including two pairs of sharp organs (mandibles and maxill[ae]) with which they pierce the skin of animals. They undergo a complete metamorphosis, their larv[ae] (called maggots) being usually without feet.
