Most Important
Most Important
By Halifax
Cold brown eggs fresh from store
Pencil marked day for each eaten
Crack the shell on scramble pan
A broken day is taken with milk
Date on milk bought with eggs
Slips one for each shell crack……..M………ed
Twelve glasses to the dozen………T……..eggs
Make healthy skin & bone…….W……..& eyes
Bread bag tag is red first….R……for a week
Toast suits eggs & milk…..F…….with coffee
Next tag trip is yellow,…..S…..save the red
One loaf last 12 days……U……a slice a day
Fresh to stale crusts……M……a loaf is gone
Crumbs stoneware…..T……albumin & yolk
Rinsed sink clean…..W…….to stainless steel
Milky foam also……R…….slides down drain
Dated shells sit……F……..in coffee grounds
Next to red tag…..S……are sprinkle crumbs
Old bread bag…..U……flat, empty, but clear
Milk is gone…….M……sour on the carton lip
Going out………T…..for the groceries today
List made:……W……Coffee Filters, grounds,
2% Milk,…….R……Bread (tag for this week
Yellow!…….F……..), Fresh brown cage-free
Eggs……S………, need a fresh bottle of Joy
Soap,…..U……get whatever else is needed.
Call……M……..before leaving the checkout
Me…….T………anwhile, I will be unfaithful.
Thank you for your accurate analysis. I really like the picture selection with my poem.
“ed” (the only named character in this poem) is the other in a marriage. “Me” is a friend who shared confidence on issues that they are experiencing. I wrote this for myself, like a bored voyeur, in an effort to digest her unusual problems.
I have not yet shared it with her.
HALIFAX! Your visual experimental poetry fries, scrambles, my brain sunny side up! Excellent work!
Mixing ‘pencil marks’ days of week thruout poem as they would be on eggs is centerpiece to this composition; it brings a sense of survival minutiae or repetitious monotony in the grand scheme of this toast slice of life…which the reader can’t help but equate metaphorically the experience with whatever that 1 tedious trying situation may be in their limited time on this earth?
Until the last stanza, I thought the poem was being told by a single soul, a bachelor hermit…but the subject reminds him/herself “Call….M….before leaving the checkout” (for whatever else is needed)…then comes the clencher “Meanwhile, I will be unfaithful”. My impulse is to say that ‘unfaithful’ means going to the damn Pop-Tart isle or picking out a few cream filled donuts, wolfing down some kolaches with mustard, anything but the same ol’ same ol’… But again, the writer leaves it vague enough to warrant some liberties so the reader can transpose into their experience. That’s just my impression, I may be mistaken. Bon appetit’!