the New Pantagruel

To My Toes

Oliver Hardies and eight Stanlies
lying obediently in rows.
stubbed and runt-like, clumsy wigglies
hunched at the ends of equally preposterous feet.
My awkward hick relatives hidden

from the public, stuffed in shoes and socks.
Oh toes, I have tried to train you
to lie flat, to diet, to dance, but you
can’t get past the first step.
Each blunder earns another insult:

Fat boys smelling like farms,
hogs wallowing in their stalls.
And yet toes, my silly little friends,
you are dumb but likeable oafs.
Plump ones, you are like schoolboys

whose faces turn red from a girl’s glance.
And you, my little ones, small and giggly,
you are my little piggies waddling to market.
Like the broken noses of boxers, dear toes,
you submit to repeated brutalities, to kicks

against tires and doors, to stubbings, to disgrace.
But still, you alone volunteer
to plunge into dark places my head’s
afraid to go, to dip your misshaped face
into a tub of untested water.

To My Stomach

Hello, old Tub.
I hear you mumble, Feed me, Feed me,
and I pat you, my sloppy beggar, to make you feel warm
and to appease the craving that echoes within you.
At feeding time, I will pitch you cow, chicken, oat, hog,
and fondly call you Henry, Walter, Pug, Norman.
I will not ignore you, old Tub.

As you huddle in your pouch of darkness,
I feel you ruminating on ambrosia, pork, bologna,
and mutton. Bacon, and borsht,
pheasant, goulash, and scallops.
You whimper I want, I want.
Be quiet, old Tub,
my Hunger Sack, my Rumble Pot, my Factory of Belches.
I will not neglect you.

I love you my Lummox, for your hunger.
You lack the discrimination of the nose.
You have the manners of a walrus.
But you have the hospitality of a king:
You welcome All, invite All to enter you. You beg even
for the light on a girl’s ankle as she turns.
You would devour it all, if it would allow.

To you, the world is the Great Uneaten,
and you yearn to swallow it. Not to love or admire,
but to consume, to take it inside
and wrap it with your juices and acids, translate it
into the body that feeds. You are demanding and spoiled,
my Blubbery Chum, my Busy Furnace.
But rest, old Tub.
I will not forget you.