New poem: "John Hoyer Updike"

 

John Hoyer Updike

 

Re-reading the biography of America’s

preeminent man of letters, Adam Begley’s

UPDIKE, I marveled even more the

second time at John Hoyer Updike’s

writerly accomplishments, which pulled

at me like a siren call to the infernal

depths of writer envy, but I kept myself

from falling as I valued the worth of my

humble life, examining the trajectory

of my own writerly way into the center

of life experience that every writer seeks

but cannot find, and the anguish left my

troubled heart and was replaced with a

gratifying joy for John Hoyer Updike’s

Nobel prize-worthy talent.

New poem: "The Oink of the Lone Pork Loin"

 

The Oink of the Lone Pork Loin

 

“Who will hear the oink of the lone pork loin?”

It’s so far outside the box that to be pounded, tenderized,

and fried alone would truly be poetic irony; —

 

There was once a song in popular culture called “Little Boxes,”

the homes we occupy, our thoughts, dreams, and noble ambitions,

every “ticky-tacky” thing for you and me and everybody; —

 

But as I grew older, I grew wiser mastering the ancient art of Sufi

sausage making, and so thin did I become in my dying that my pants

no longer fit me; and I needed a bigger house to live in; —

 

Standing by the kitchen sink this morning, the four pork loin slices

unwrapped from their cellophane packaging, one slice of loin

stood out in its own see-through wrapper; —

 

I felt sorry for the lone pork loin, estranged forever from itself

and everything familiar, and turning to heaven, I sang in playful anger,

“Who will hear the oink of the lone pork loin?”