seven deadly sins: class exercises

Sunshine (Yellow Persona poem)
When the princess spun in her buttery skirts,
I was there.
When you were three and painted that maniacal grinning sun,
I was there.
When you sat on the park bench after getting high and fed fleecy ducklings,
I was there.
When you sang incantations into daffodils and durges for maple leaves,
I was there.
When your summer tan faded in that first month of college,
I was there.
When you puked up Easy Mac after one too many shots,
I was there.
When you painted the nursery a gender-neutral color,
I was there.
When the baby god jaundice,
I was there.
When you poured honey into your chamomile tea,
I was there.
When you gummed bananas,
I was there.
When you bought your sullen granddaughter a butterscotch sundae and realized you'd grown old,
I was there.

***

Special Sauce (prose poem)

I am a compliment and nothing else, a culinary color wheel that spins like a Happy Meal kaleidiscope
and ends up smashed onto a red plastic tray. I am a secret known only to toothless meth-heads
and soft-spoken immigrants. They are my gatekeepers, they are like magicians who will never reveal
their tricks. They are like prisoners who are always innocent of their crimes, be it of murder of selling
marijuana to nurses or fucking seventeen year olds. The answer is obvious: it is right between your lips,
but like my counterparts we will be lounging on your hips like the yellow foothills on the coasts of America.

***

George Washington Carver's Dream

There are some things that are eternal,
interchangeable, blatant as god.

I wanted to create something that could shift-shape
that could feed millions, that could sit as I sat
in dusty shelves, waiting like a fat, sweet-toothed guardian angel.

I wanted to create something that could bring peace to nations,
that was the united colors of us.
A compliment to the darkest fruit or the whitest bread.

I wanted something to mend the tears in these feeble fabrics
blot out the negative space. "How did we ever live without it?" they'd ask,
and I'd shrug humbly.

I wanted something that couldn't be ignored,
but ketchup was already taken, and sugar was a cop-out
nothing more than salt's ditzy cousin.
So I crushed 'em,
crushed 'em
crushed 'em.

And so I will be remembered, praised, repackaged and sold
cast in bronze, but only a tiny figure in some pastoral corner
of a Midwestern state university.
Peanut butter.
Big. Deal.