Ketchup on Okra
A quaint southern diner, throwback to the 50s.
Football and country music star posters dotted
the walls. I splashed ketchup on fried okra.
You were horrified, couldn’t believe it.
No one does things like that you said.
Here in mid-December I looked at you,
considered the irony between bites of grilled
catfish, its dead white flesh nourishing me.
How strange that we live on the dead.
Two years ago you betrayed me,
your Christmas present.
Found trash online, a religion professor
that you flew to using the GPS I bought
because you were terrified of driving long distance.
Did he preach to you of love, convince of Cinderella
dreams? What took me a year of patience, consideration,
took mere days with him. He must have been Prince
Charming, for you opened your legs to him on
meeting for the second time. Had the gall to email
me later that the whole time he was fucking you
all you could think about was me: you were in
the back of my mind. How sweet. The front of you
was moving back and forth under him, the back of
you thinking of me, special.
How he must have preached imagery from Solomon’s
song before impaling you with his crucifix, how his
sermon seared your carnal soul.
You knew me, not him, where I had treated you with
kindness, care, you were just the latest online plaything,
for aliens like him do not love girls like you.
Discarded like a broken, ugly toy, you returned to me,
contrite, pulled the fool from the Tarot, and though I
knew you were a dark angel I embraced the horror.
Now, in this diner, splashing ketchup on okra,
I see in your eyes my reflection.
This is the meal that I have paid to eat.
Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. He had been published widely including The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review. He was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs. In winter 2014 he will have poems published in Dead Snakes. Summer 2014 saw a poem in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems. He was featured Poet of the week May, 2014 Poetry Super Highway. Forthcoming: Poems in Blood Moon Rising and Down in the Dirt Magazine. His first book, Empty Houses and American Renditions will be published by Hen House Press in Fall 2014.