A Geography of Lunch by Mary Jo Schimelpfenig
I love the idea that a poem can be an image or a taste or a scent, or anything less ordered than words on a page (or screen). Is the poem the poet’s experience eating her lunch, or the words she wrote about it? Maybe it’s both.
A Geography of Lunch
By Mary Jo Schimelpfenig
My mother asks me if I like my sandwich.
I say I haven’t tasted it yet.
“What are you doing? Are you dreaming
off into space?” she says.
I am doing nothing, mother.
I am writing.
I am writing it all down
and remembering the woman I will become.
I lift my sandwich, sinking teeth into toasted wheat.
I locate the precise taste of ham in my mind.
I eat slowly, like my grandmother, who savors her salad
as everyone inhales dessert.
I chew the poem forming,
mozzarella and words traveling the impossible road
to daylight.
