The Poetry Marathon

Hour 23 – Why Mozzarella

Why Mozzarella

 

It started with cheese sticks on a Saturday morning

reached on tip-toe from the right-side drawer of the refrigerator. 

Peeled plastic independence on the way to see 

Ariel fall in love just one more time. 

 

Then onto slices with tomatoes

roasted with olive oil dripping over capers

for lunches with my mother. 

Let us indulge, she says, every time she takes a bite. 

 

And cheese sticks, again, on a Saturday morning,

or rather a Friday night that didn’t end. Biting through

and not pulling. Too tipsy to wish for webbing

wrapping around my tongue. 

 

Next onto pizza made with homemade everything

a promise he made to feed and cherish the work

we have done. Our attempt to do better, to fulfil

the tasks we laid before us. 

 

No, back to cheese sticks. Pulling at the strings to find what even might be joy. 

 

(Hour 18 of 24) “minding its own business”

a caterpillar

in the quiet bamboo grove

does not stop to think

 

© 2021 S Phua

hour 17 prompt-image prompt

 

the dark hangs heavy

over the bridge this night

as shadows play

near dim pools of light

 

two distant silhouettes

distant enough that

were they to merge

they would embody affection

even to prejudiced eyes

that on closer inspection

would then reject it

and quote a definition

 

Love was never gender’s slave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hour 23

Ooo we are hitting the rough time where everything I write feels shitty. But I am here for it!

 

The House of River and Smoke

 

The house sits on an island 

Made from rivers

Cutting through the earth

Letting the fog hide it

The earth’s smoke mixed

With the smoke from our fires

The house sits stuck in time

Waiting to be found again

Waiting for the next need

Flavours of Cheese

G.K. Chesterton once wrote “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

Dad introduced me to the delightful taste of cheese.

In our home, Dad made different flavours of cheese

An omelette got cheese

Rice puddle had cheese

Stuffed bread had cheese

Everything you touched had cheese

Then I didn’t know cheese makes things better everyday

As a kid I have enjoyed the taste

Dad knew that a little cheese can instantly make food tastier

If I had known, I would have ate it every day and put it on everything.

Dad is a seasoned veteran but I am not

Will experiment with my children and cheese and see

23. Say Cheese!

When I was young we watched a video in science with a block of cheese under a microscope.

It wasn’t cheese at all but a hoard of microscopic maggots holding hands and wriggling to form what looked like a block of cheese.

Block of Cheese

Microscopic maggot tricksters looking like a block of cheese.

I didn’t eat cheese for two years after that and wondered what else in my reality wasn’t real.

I learned that every kind or cheese was actually tiny maggots cha-chaing their days away pretending to be cheese.

I learned that if you had hooves or horns or poultry feet you could pretty much guarantee a heartless existence followed by a tortuous, brutal death.

I learned that if a human could eat it a human would eat it with ketchup and an inalienable sense of entitlement.

(Throw the maggots blocks at these guys!)

I learned Mexicans picked strawberries but couldn’t get a license to drive to and from the fields. I learned the same thing about the help at our favorite restaurant.

I learned most people practice compassion only when it’s convenient.

I learned the more you said about it, the more you started looking like you had hooves yourself, or chicken feet, or unlicensed brown skin.

I learned to eat the maggots and keep my mouth shut.

HOUR 24 Haiku 6 Torture

Gliding hand caress

Beauties pure tortured figure

Suffering eternal

Your Mother didn’t tell you

Poem 20 – A Nighttime Walk

Nighttime is petrichor and silver sky
Kissing my self-awareness softly
With lips of river’s mist and the promise of dawn

Crisp crunches of bunches of gravel
Caress corners of a mouth upturned into its cheeks
Feet attuned to a rhythm of the body

Mirrored in moonlight that dances behind clouds
Shifting about and sifting photons
Betwixt floating puddles pondering pensively

HOUR 24 Haiku 6

Without spoken words
My sole arm wraps about you
I sleep on your chest