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scenes from a protestant childhood
i finally figured it out; i’m screwed up
from oatmeal overdose as a child. porridge.
maternal propaganda
breakfast is the most important meal of the day
why? why is breakfast the most, etc.?
that’s why i’ve never truly
grasped beauty in the keatsian sense. it was exposure
to excessive ugliness
porridge slagheap of grey, late-winter
snow no amount of sugar
could save.
then there was the morality of it, the soldiering on, a la pilgrim’s progress.
i’d heard stories some pilgrims had
pretty nice mornings: tender, green things, kiwis, mouthfuls
of spring. white linen. on our very road, cereal that chatted
back from its
white pool
& yes, I often succumbed
to envy, scowling in the farmhouse
over my chipped bowl, ignorant
of love’s lumpy shapes, its way
of swamping the pure heft of itself deep
inside your gut.
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