There’s a lot of resurrection going on,
the lambs’ chops on the spit, the sluggish
yeasts that found a second wine and produced
a vintage beer, small batch, reserved for people
within a 20-mile radius.
We sit under an English walnut tree. The sign
says Sit at Your Own Risk: Watch for Falling Walnuts.
And one did indeed fall into my glass, pushing up
rivulets of golden brew out of the glass onto the table,
my shirt, my god.
There’s a lot of rising up from the graves these days,
rock-star chefs who’d fallen behind the times
with ordinary dishes, who catered to the whims
of chic gluttons, VIPs from mountain-top burbs
protected from violence and bad food.
We ate spaghetti at the last candidate’s dinner.
$100 a plate for poorly designed pasta with a hint
of Italian sausage, lukewarm garlic bread, hard
like a headstone. We wished we’d opted out
for breakfast at a roadside diner.
I’m puffed up with indifference.
Already they’re pre-empting my travel shows
with football. They say wings are cheaper this year,
but I’m not sure. (I have to give my dog eyedrops
then check his pulse to see if it’s within a normal range.
I know mine’s not.) I never liked games in which
you had to knock people into the dirt to become a hero.
I need a dinner party where the guests don’t talk sports
and the host serves French baguettes with real butter and
red wine that stands at attention when we call its name.
John Dorroh likes to travel. He routinely ends up in other peoples’ kitchens sharing culinary tidbits and tall tales. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Hundreds of others have appeared in journals such as River Heron, Feral, Kissing Dynamite, North of Oxford, and Penstrickin. He’s had two poetry chapbooks published and a book of micro-fiction. He lives in Illinois close to St. Louis.