Eat This

Target cake with a bull's-eye looming.
Tiered cake with a dancing girl inside.
Called up, put upon-sisters, can we
bring one? Consecrated cake of sand
that ticks like a clock. Can we bake it
and box it and get it there by dawn?
Cake of the coming Zeitgeist, cake
that inches palely toward the timer's
ding. Watch the cakes that follow caskets,
the ones that honor cretins and despots.
Here comes the mink cake in its fox-fur box;
there goes the one with the small fire inside,
the one with gilt letters rising at the edge
of blue frosting, and our favorite: soft
and moist and with a baked-in steel file.
Soon we'll need companion cakes, cake
indices, and a boy to fan away the gnats.
Cakes atop cakes . . . so we'll have our
mountain of crumbs and feel in our hearts
our bidding's been done. Even as we are
poured in. God help us cool on a rack, bask
on a sill. God bless these cakes that go forth
as prime provisions for covert passages. Try
this cake with a meadow inside. God
spare us bakers. Let the cake's sweetness
beguile its eaters.

Copyright © 2007 Nance Van Winckel All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission