Sestina Ends Current Hiatus

Pop Luck Soup

Lettuce dew the cabbage head chop.
Sea hear, old gourd face. The squash is still on the sill.
Radical zucchinis. Carrots pointing and poking.
Turnip, have you no heart? Don’t be rutabaga.
Radish reaction. Thistle never do; wilt thou look?
Please, asparagus more of this.

Peas, take off your jackets, mix with us.
Ouch, salt, potato eyes cry, chopped.
Corn fits in hand like a tool. Look,
unknotted legs mush the silly
knuckle-balling tomato out of a rut
with a nice little poke.

Habanero the jalapeno poke,
ice cream koan this,
rooting around in a bag
of bluegrass chop.
Mush run it again through the still
to get the right look.

Should put this aside now and let it cool,
this pig in a poke,
or something of that ilk.
I’m not sure what this is,
and we’re still chopping,
scrounging at the bottom of the bag.

A soup should be like a gab,
like a parade, the curbs full of onlookers,
the marching bands chopping
through the lines of folks pushing and pulling and poking,
heads popping up like thistledowns.
Sure, and fools with painted faces acting dilly,

playing out the King’s idylls.
The clowns are the Court of Garbage,
composting that and this,
giving us all for free a new look,
for in the eye they poke,
and to the nose they chop.

So long lives this spicy green silliness,
bitter chops of arguing arugula,
this face wears the soupy look of poker.