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Meat Stevens Jan 2020
I was recently complimented
by a bowl of Whole Foods clam chowder
so I thanked it.
You’re not so bad yourself, Whole Foods clam chowder!
Truly, I enjoy you very much.
Antino Art Aug 2017
On rainy days
I look up poems set in Seattle,
then look back at the rain set against the window

I imagine the water was carried here
from the shores of their bay
across Pike Place, through Belltown,
in buckets they use
to carry Pacific salmon off fishing boats,
or in lidded Styrofoam bowls used
to take out clam chowder

I practice walking in this manner, sans umbrella, through the parking lot of a South Florida strip mall.

When I reach the 24-hour Dunkin Donuts, past the laundromat and the check cashing store, I channel my inner Seattleite: poised in wet socks,
unrushed as the sips they take from their mugs when its **** pouring outside

I renounce sugary accoutrements and have what they're having:
Black coffee with a splash of rain,
A balance perfected on their slanted hill streets
that breed more poets per capita
than anywhere else in the country

Vegas can have its mirages in the desert
San Francisco, its gold bridge

I think I should just have this coffee,
and this rainy day
as the poem it is.
She was a girl called Chowder,
Hopes hanging on her heart
And roses in her window.
Written up to as much as she thought she was,
She let go,
Let the blows take her back to the
Days on the beach--
The lake.
Her age too young,
But too confident to see
An impending reality
Of ultimate misery.
Every night she puts her feelings away
And every day she unpacks them again--
Hanging the hopes on her heart
And the roses in her window.
Claiming what she had
She dreamed,
She flew!
Like a bird she was away
Where the cold no longer persisted,
Away from where he hunted.
Out alone she breathed heavy,
Ready to start afresh,
Winning hearts yet wondering why,
And downing more drafts than healthy.
Again she enters into the memory
A kiss
On the beach
At the lake.

Chowder--
Return not to the past you dreamt of leaving. Enter into the future with hopes hanging on your heart. **** the rips he caused on your heart. Water the roses in the open dimmed window. Heap a load of joys in your life. Claim what is yours and what was never his.

           Chowder--
                   Take your wings and fly.
Aliferous: Having wings

— The End —