Mint on a Pillow
By Paul Handley

The etymology of Cornish game hen does not interest me,
or my dog Kelly, whose slobber coats two-thirds of the hen.
That we will eat this hen that has been filled with alloy pellets, dead dived into a lagoon
where the neighborhood youth urinate and marinated by my third best friend, Kelly, who eats
the feces of all manner of dogs. She is not chauvinist.

I’m thinking white wine, chutney sauce, crème Brule branded in brown sugar with my spouse’s
initials, music of slightly rockified country.
An impingement on my feast, I remember that there is double churned, sucrose-saccharine,
mint chocolate ice cream absent the lime coloring, which makes it taste less minty.

I crunched beneath my muck boots, poisonous mushrooms known as au naturel.
Stir a drink with the stem and cap as an umbrella.
Sans mushrooms, the digested food spreads like embalming fluid.
I kiss my dog and wife in that order.

——

Paul Handley spent a career as a student and a student of odd jobs. He has an MA, an MPA, and is ABD. He has driven a cab and sold meat door-to-door. Paul has work included or forthcoming in Anemone Sidecar, Apollo’s Lyre, Boston Literary Magazine, Ophelia Street, and others.

Read more from Paul Handley.

Read more from Fiction.