Tonight's Poet Corner: Carbs With Friends

Carbs With Friends
by Belinda Roddie

After Robby ate an entire pepperoni pizza
all by himself, I was pretty worried that he would
spill the half-digested contents all over my mother's
afghan as it wound itself around his sluggish ankles,
but instead, he found it more comforting to sleep off the
intake of processed dairy, meat, and crust
rather than expel it. So I was grateful for that.

Three of us played cards while he snored -
Chelsea making garlic bread in the kitchen,
my sister stirring marinara into her tortellini.
We dealt spades and aces that got a bit
crinkled when the crumbs from our fingers
stained in all the weirdest ways, and half the
game was lost in the impending food coma that knocked
all common sense from the left side of my noggin.

I wanted to drink a beer at some point, but I simply
forgot to do so - as if the carbonation wasn't
beckoning to be imbibed, and the wheat
could be spared from the onslaught of stomach acid
for another night. Besides, I feared abdominal cramps,
and it was better to nestle into Robby's swollen side,
where the flab bulged in just the best way to cushion me
in case I actually fell asleep, and let the aftertaste
of complex sugars sweeten my tongue and tempt
me to overindulge on cereal and toast the next day.