Tonight's Poet Corner: Calico Pants
Calico Pants
by Belinda Roddie
It's not that we couldn't get along,
or we couldn't sip from the same spoon
when offered the communal bucket of soup,
dripping cream on our fingers where we
slurped it off each other and drooled out
euphoria in aluminum cans. It's that somehow,
whenever I wore my calico pants, you became
frightened of me, afraid I'd become a patchwork
madman hidden in the lurch of the wharf,
another bush man, or racist guitarist
shrieking below a diner and a sundae shop,
shrunken head laden with bay salt as extra
seasoning. I thought, to Hell with
the abrasions, when a carnivore
wearing herbivores' leaves decides to
shred me up like freeze-dried meat
on a stick. I'll keep with the slacks
because at least they don't think I'm
foaming at the mouth half past nine.
by Belinda Roddie
It's not that we couldn't get along,
or we couldn't sip from the same spoon
when offered the communal bucket of soup,
dripping cream on our fingers where we
slurped it off each other and drooled out
euphoria in aluminum cans. It's that somehow,
whenever I wore my calico pants, you became
frightened of me, afraid I'd become a patchwork
madman hidden in the lurch of the wharf,
another bush man, or racist guitarist
shrieking below a diner and a sundae shop,
shrunken head laden with bay salt as extra
seasoning. I thought, to Hell with
the abrasions, when a carnivore
wearing herbivores' leaves decides to
shred me up like freeze-dried meat
on a stick. I'll keep with the slacks
because at least they don't think I'm
foaming at the mouth half past nine.
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