FATTY CANARY CHRIS PILLETTE

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Mining Dylan Thomas for all his pap

after booze moves me from Swansea

to swan song, I recite him in the kitchen,

 

his reputation astral shaped like escarole

flush in the colander dripping loose rinse,

his colour a varnish like red leaf lettuce,

 

its pink stalk veiny, set near a cone

of in-curling cabbage, near cut half-hearts

of bleeding berries that like Thomas’

 

heart sit askew, bobbing at sea, a conical

cabbage buoy soaked by blood, near yolky

floats of liver, no Walcott aphrodisiac

 

tern-egg omelet, no thick carved 

marble slab of Apollo distilled in Rilke’s

incorrigible turn, no Caribbean

 

winds flapping the curtains on Crane’s

empty ferry berth, not to this woman who 

thinks poetry a gawping bore, yet turns

 

a phrase as easy as she poaches eggs 

or tosses salad, makes slaw, toasts seeds, 

or cackles like cracked pepper at her smithy

 

word play, her phrases golden apples,

plucked & skinned, rolled in to make

even Helen drool from the scent.