By God, The Menu's Edible

A poem about whether birds could be jealous of dogs. As in, whether a dog can be so good at being a dog, and a bird so bad at being a bird, that the bird looks at the dog and thinks, "We get it, asshole."

It was a metaphor. Or, at least, it seemed like a metaphor. Marcella wouldn't have wanted to try and explain it to anyone just yet. But that was the beautiful thing about poetry. She didn't have to. She didn't have to! Ha! The only thing she had to do was make it good. Easier said than done, of course, but from there, the poem would express itself — maybe literally. Who was it? That painter from Michigan — he'd done a portrait so marvelous, it explained its own origins; to those who went to view it, the portrait spoke to them, in between choked sobs, of the emotional genesis behind its inception. Frankly, the idea of her poetry being too forthcoming with that kind of information frightened Marcella.

"I think you and I should agree right now that some things are better left up to the imagination," she said under her breath, to the journal on the table in front of her, in the coffee shop, where she'd been for a few hours at least, thinking about whether birds could be jealous of dogs, and whether that was worth writing about.

"I want you to force me to finish something," Marcella had said to her friend Kat earlier that week. They'd been at a pilates class, holding a plank. Marcella was struggling; Kat wasn't.

"No one can force you to do anything," replied Kat. Why wasn't she shaking? If Marcella wasn't having such a hard time, she would've nudged Kat off-balance — in a friendly way, of course — when the instructor wasn't looking.

"I can get things done when there's a deadline."

"Then give yourself a deadline."

"I can't make the deadline. Just like I can't do pilates outside of pilates class."

"How am I supposed to force you? What am I supposed to do if you don't meet the deadline?"

"You can take my phone for a day. Text all of my exes. Freak out my mom by calling her and then hanging up when she answers. Post a meme on Facebook that makes the elderly concerned for my wellbeing. Whatever you want, so long as I hate the thought of it."

Kat turned her head toward Marcella and smirked. If Marcella hadn't already been shaking, she would've found herself doing so then. What an evil grin. Goodness! Friends were vile things.

Marcella fell out of the plank and swallowed her shame as the instructor, noticing immediately, announced loudly, as if to the whole class, that it was okay to fail, just so long as you got back up.

"I'll probably just end up organizing your calendar, to be honest," Kat mused, her plank still perfect, a veritable paragon of planks.

***

A poem about the moon racing to catch up with the sun. At first the moon is inspired by the sun, so much so that it imitates it: Look at me, I frequent this spot too! But the sun doesn't seem to know the moon exists. And so that inspiration sours. Eventually, it becomes envy. After a few million years, the moon catches up; the two celestial bodies collide. Boom! Or, well — you'd think there'd be a boom, right? There isn't. Instead, the moon slams into the sun and disintegrates like a drop of water falling into a hot pan.

It was almost 6PM. The barista came out from behind the counter and over to Marcella's table. "Hey, Marcella, we're about to have to dim the lights." The sound of his voice, a human voice, all but plucked Marcella from her thoughts like a lifeguard pulling a child out of the pool by its life jacket. Marcella groaned; the barista, what was his name, Jack, maybe, asked if everything was okay, and she replied that it was, that she was just thinking about lifeguards again. "Can I have fifteen more minutes?" Marcella asked, and at Jack's apprehensive sigh, added, "Please, if I don't get something finished I'm gonna have Google Calendar notifications popping up on my phone every thirty minutes." Jack frowned at her; he always frowned at her, she knew that with more certainty than she possessed about his name. John? John said five minutes, that's all he could do; the place was too bright, he didn't make the rules (it was one of those coffee-by-day-wine-by-night kind of places.) Marcella smiled and turned back to her journal with renewed focus, determined to figure out what happened to the moon after it fell into the sun...

When had it been? Last week? Last week she'd gotten stuck scrolling through social media again. An acquaintance who was a singer, and also rich, had performed on some morning talk show, and posted a clip; in it, as she sang, each person in the studio audience cried, and each tear gleamed iridescent and beautiful and, most unexpectedly, solid. The tear-beads fell from face to floor, and then shattered into dust.

Listening to the clip, Marcella herself cried iridescent, solid tears, which similarly shattered on the floor of her apartment, creating a mess she would have to clean up later. Were these things like glass? Would they cut her feet? No — most likely not. Someone would've sued the girl if so. Marcella stared down at it, the pixie dust of her magical tear, and stretched a big toe toward it tentatively, but just before it touched, the teardust vanished — blown away, as if by the wind.

Three hours later, Marcella was in bed, lying in perhaps the most uncomfortable position, with her legs up on the wall for some reason, staring at her phone, unfathomably deep in a rabbit hole that had begun with learning what she could about the singer. You heard it here first: Unless set to private, all Venmo payments are public by default. A voice in her head tried to tell her this was becoming unhealthy, but several other voices up there gagged that one and shoved it in a closet.

Marcella knew she was sowing dissatisfaction. She knew what she was doing. But there was a point to it. Contempt could be fuel. Even self-contempt. How could this rich girl sing so beautifully, and to such effect? That the answer was both clear and obvious didn't matter; Marcella didn't need the answer, only the question, repeated like a chorus in a song about her own impotence. Did Kat ever spiral like this? Another question Marcella knew the answer to. She called Kat anyway. As a person, Kat was of two uncompromising states: Willing to chat, or utterly not. Currently, it was the latter. She was about to go to a pilates class. "If it's that urgent, come to class with me," Kat said. "We can talk after. Tell you what, we can get ice cream after. On me. Don't try to convince me to skip the pilates and only do the ice cream. It's important to earn your treats."

Marcella agreed, then remembered that pilates was a form of exercise, and tried to take it back, pleading insanity: She wasn't thinking straight due to the blood currently rushing from her legs to her head.

***

A poem about no poet ever turning down an offer of free food. But make it funny, or else it's just sort of pedestrian.

***

"I made my best friend threaten me so I could get something done. I have trouble finishing things. I used to be able to finish things. I finished things all the time, but they sucked. I think one time I made a candle go out — but the wax was low, so who knows. Now I try to write things that are actually good — that meet my standards. But my standards are, I don't know, too high or something? Not that I have impossibly impeccable taste or anything. Though, to be honest — nevermind."

"Hhh."

"My best friend isn't an artist, so she doesn't get it, but sometimes she offers me ideas for poems. The other day she suggested I write about, 'The moral obligation to use CTEs over subqueries in your SQL code.' I said, 'That's not a poem, that's just someone with a lisp's worst nightmare.' She does data. Isn't it funny how when we don't know what someone really does, we just say they 'do' the thing? Imagine my mom was a farmer, and I just described it as, 'My mom does plants.'"

"Nghhh."

"Anyway, the point isn't just to finish things. It's to make magic. Did you see that girl who sings and makes everyone who listens cry hard little rainbow tears? I want to be like that. Well, not exactly like that — I'm ninety-nine percent sure she has a cocaine addiction. She has a bunch of transactions described using only snow-related emojis."

"I'm done."

"Great," said Marcella, and got off him. He panted, hairy chest heaving, face flushed both pleasure and — what was that? Fear? It looked like fear. "Are you okay?"

"Can I see the poem you finished?" he asked.

Marcella skin turned cold, and possibly pale. So, actually, fear had been waiting in the wings, waiting for her to be thrust onto the stage and into the spotlight.

"I have to pee first," Marcella said, and, being they were at her place, didn't come back out until he left.

***

A poem about a poem whose ending has been inexplicably torn off, like a picture of two ex-lovers from when they were together now ripped in half, the other piece lost to time. An exercise in concluding without conclusion. The poem-within-a-poem is written (or "transcribed," within the context of the overpoem) in such a way that the ending isn't really all that important, or, said differently, isn't really all that desired. The overpoem — the actual poem — takes the opportunity to lament the loss of its transcription's ending, but not without commenting slyly on how something can perhaps be made much better by being broken. How easy it is to imagine that the thing would be dismissable, if whole.

In the margins, a note from Marcella: Still too sappy. Make it ironic. It might work if it's funny.

***

Marcella snatched the poem off the table and ripped it up. A voice in her head told her she was acting like a baby, and in response — to spite that voice, in fact — she took the whole thing one step further, and put the scraps in her mouth, and swallowed. A man, older, by the sound of his voice, and sitting nearby, said, “By God, the menu’s edible?” His dining partner shushed him; obviously Marcella had confused the man, which irritated her further. That her pathetic action had evoked a pathetic response from someone else, a stranger, a man who said, “By God,” made her that much more pathetic. She pretended to spit out some of the paper even though it was all already down her throat. She could feel a few pieces lodged in there. Which still clung on? What snippets of verses did they contain? She was struck with the absolutely insane impulse to retrieve them, those clinging few — to stick a hand down her stupid throat and fish out the sticky, wet scraps. As if by virtue of hanging on in there, they were revealing themselves as worthy: sticky wet diamonds in the throaty rough.

Finally, she glanced up at Kat. Goodness! Kat! Her nose had grown considerably; it was sticking six inches off her face and looked prepared to poke out an eye. “It was well-written,” Kat said apprehensively. She winced: more growth. “Really,” Kat reiterated. Marcella took a long gulp of water and swallowed.