On Balance, Like This Moment

If you took this moment
and you sliced it at the deli
it would come out roughly
circular and flat but rippled:
full of random fat – like
mortadella – blobs of white
amid amebic pink and red –
but it might also feature
severed purple peppercorns:

terrorized and full of dread
as victims’ eyes – against
gratuitously brutal ravaging
of burning caramel – surreally
deliquescing through its
dark marauding allies – sharply
split pecans and blood-black
Kalamata olives: polished
by a sinister soupçon

of squid: squalidly imploding
on the palate but a glory
in the main: one must, I would
maintain, develop taste
for every terrible inordinate
exorbitance. Today I lapped
up everyone I could. On balance,
like this moment, they were
unaccountably quite good.


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