The courtyard, cool, the menu en español
we, a gringa and me, her sullen mate,
both barely awake. The huevos, Oaxacan,
a cold dish my wife begins to eat
with all of her appetites intact
until she sees the bits of chilies
have legs, her plate seems to crawl
with chilies that have legs.
We look to the kitchen, aghast,
and then to the local folks at nearby tables
who eat without reservation. I look back
at the menu and read, chapulines
check my pocket dictionary:
grasshoppers! and I, who’d not
eaten the flesh of an animal
since 1972, take to the plate,
and eat every one. The crunch
satisfies a forty-year craving
for the gnawing of bones,
for the tasting of organ meat, for the rending
of limbs.
Deb leaves hungry and my
lust for flesh is not yet sated.
We wander to the market
and find plates of the critters
in great heaps. I buy two scoops
for a few pesos and find
the hoary hunter in me is roused.
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, The Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritualwell, One Art, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by Sheila-Na-Gig.
More at www.dickwestheimer.com.
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