Joseph Powell

Eating Ironies

How much of the swaying, wriggling, thriving world
a long lifetime consumes, what a body needs and concedes—

that walk-in cooler of beef, the coops of chickens,
folds of lamb, stys of swine; 

the fruit of the sea that could fill a boxcar—
salmon and rockfish, scallops and crabs, tuna and bass;

fields of wheat and corn and rice
and rye, potatoes, molar-mixed to vigor?

How many nuts have been cracked in my name,
forever treeless--wal-, brazil-, hazel-, and cashew?

How many beheaded cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli?
Is it the apex of irony to love the world as you pluck it,

shoot it, cut it, cook it, mash it, savor it, praise it?
And delude yourself into believing so many things

love us back, as we pet-ify them, hug a breathing steak?
And how much of our philosophies of pleasure, the days

and ways we seize, comes at the expense of something’s, someone’s,
failure, a life-spirit expending, like hooking a fish,

using llamas as sherpas, or any prize or award,
cheap food pulled from the livelihoods of the poor?

Boiling a shrieking lobster, I eat ironies like bread,
raise a glass to the swami of my illusions, to my good and lucky life. 

Back to Issue XV…