Some of What I'm About to Tell You is True

Some of What I'm About to Tell You is True

They started with boiled
Barbie sauce, which they cooled
using snowballs
from the Oort Cloud.

Wound up serving a thick,
pink gravy.

If it weren't for the recession,
NASA would have investigated.

No, not the sauce--the snowballs!

That gravy, over towering mounds
of potato-studded polenta,
looked like lava torching the slopes
of Mount Pinatubo.

Made their anniversary dinner
seem even more explosive.

And the red wine was a bloody challenge,
leaving scabs on their glasses.

But best were the candied yams,
so inundated with brown sugar
and butter--one still-warm bite
and they seemed possible again:

an end to Oort logic and her
serving as his catch cow.

James Bertolino
Bellingham, Washington
Mercy Corps.