Wow, here we are at the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo. It’s been quite a journey, and produced some poems I would never have come up with were it not for the prompts. Today’s prompt at NaPoWriMo is as follows: Start by reading Alberto Rios’s poem ‘Perfect for Any Occasion’. Now, write your own two-part poem that focuses on a food or type of meal. At some point in the poem, describe the food or meal as if it were a specific kind of person. Give the food/meal at least one line of spoken dialogue.

The Fourth Earl Reflects

 

Thick-cut gammon,

anointed with English mustard,

some crisp lettuce, whirled dry –

the freshest of home-baked white.

Sharp cheddar, crumbling beneath

sweet brown relish, on a seeded roll.

Egg mayonnaise – accepting of

the shower of cress as her due,

taking her bow as the curtain rises again:

‘Thank you, thank you all’.

These are the traditionalists,

these stalwarts of the British picnic;

stiff-upper-lipped, blanketed in tweed,

gazing out toward Empire.

 

But shift up and make room; roll out

the chequered carpet at last to

bánh mi, boccadillo and roti,

arepas and smørrebrød.

Be no longer suspicious of

our neighbour’s pan bagnat,

so chic, and so well-dressed:

‘Mais bien sûr, c’est vrai’.

And as for pastrami on thin dark rye,

poppy-strewn bagels with oak-smoked salmon,

hummus and falafel piled into pita –

how could we in good faith turn them away?

Allow them to take their place once and for all,

beneath the watery British sun.