A hunk of cheese
is in the fridge.
Mozzarella
or provolone,
just white cheddar,
or something fresh
and unknown to
me, some cheese like
Greek Kasseri.
The cheese is white,
angelic, the light of
the fridge casts a
halo in the
wrinkles of its
zip-loc baggie.
This cheese smells ripe
and bears the treads
of another’s
butter knife.
It’s been eaten
before, and was
to eat again.
How good could it
have been? It has
been preserved well,
possibly for
me, and there’s no
expiration
date, which worries
my gut less than
my head, so I
put it back in
the fridge, instead
thinking of how
good it could’ve
been.
—–
I’ll be appearing in the guest column of The Herald News on Sunday the 26th. If possible I’ll add a link to the piece I’d written. Since it’s been a few moons since my last post on this barren blogscape of mine, I thought I’d throw this poem I’d jotted down a couple of months back, about a chunk of cheese I had found in my refrigerator. I think it was mozzarella.
May the eldest
dog repose in
the middle road.
Selfish-certain
that it must live
on to serve my
devices, I
chase after the
dying thing.
On white lines
it passed sides.
On black knees
I hold it.
back-forth-back-forth, crying
we belong
to the past
now.
May the eldest
dog repose in
the middle road.
This sufferable beast
with soft eyes that lull me
in motherly refrain.
Pleasured by all this
pain — I thought you would.
The corpse I am
shaking, stay alive for me!
The corpse I am
coddling, it will all be over soon.
May the eldest
dog reprose in
the middle road.
Shame I brought to
a family name
my factory name,
employee of such-‘n-such
division and department name,
unskilled laborer sheep
bearing the indefinite
lay-off name. The trained flock
disapproves, those who
share this same name.
Six generations of Midwestern
Dutch kind of name, bestowed
to babies whose bodies glisten with
elbow grease as doctors ease them
from the wombs of seamstresses and
office receptionists.
This good German name
“those Germans are quite
the workers, ya know” name,
as said by Norwegian Minnesotans,
but the babe, though born with
dirt already caked under his
nails, had the fingers of a
pianist and not a butcher.
Aye, there’s the rub!
The father who could not cry
collected the dieseline sweat
of his brow and with it refilled empty
bottles in auto shop toolboxes,
where days puttered and the
revolutions of ceiling fans moved
faster than cars came in the lot.
The mother cried to cab drivers,
confessing her child’s
delusions of grandeur,
an idiom she had heard on
Soap Opera monologues,
emphasizing “grandeur”
as did Sergio the Spaniard
heartbreaker she adored
so so much on those
rainy Tuesdays.
And well, Uncles just called him gay.
Such is the price
for passion in flyover
country, hoping to
grow gardens
in gravel lots,
nurturing
blossoms and
the fruits of
creative labor,
only for the batch
to be stomped on
by disgraced high school
quarterbacks that recall
their glory days on
Tuesday two-dollar-you-call-its
and Thirsty Thursdays, or the
unemployment line marches to
the liquor store, a succession
of heavy handed footsteps
by the boots of kin and
cigarette beggars,
all of whom
have inspired his words as
they have his escape, so that he
may make
a name for himself.
George T. Mormann 