Away Like Dust (poem)

Away Like Dust

Several announcements that the hour was at hand

were backburnered, the dare administered had been

not to face down a seasonal inflatable

but to let the season pass with a period

as advertisements give ample warning

to contemplate on a sofa safety

or safely…doing something…

It seems unnecessary

Saving your own life in any given moment will always

seem unnecessary

And the task of the turkey checklists into suburban sprawl

think of organic, slimmer birds spared antibiotics

Think of cruelty, think of local employment

Think of new ways to boil in oil, or corrode tissue in salt

Think of what the rich do the cutting-edge and the pure do

Think of oysters soaking sewage

mutinous system failures on floating

party buses, stuffed with puking drunks

harsh bosses contracted by contractors

desperate crews untutored tidy errors

overboard a severed foot or smashed skull

the touch, the essence, in your holiday swill

Think then of pearl onions and celery

Croutons in a bag

Game hens…are game hens like foie gras, precious and evil

your own to adorn your satisfied plate

your own skeleton of a living thing picked clean

there was the bird to save, the fragile tree-skirt

the blinking LEDs skitter towards you like a beggar

you’d supposed the calendar was bedrock and not a net

repaired each year by fishers with patient needlework

Away Like Dust

The Poor Belabored Beast Page

To Terms

(2019, Stephanie Foster)