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Es Foong / Waffle Irongirl

This poem contains ramen

This poem contains ramen.

It contains ramen because I am living in this poem / and these days the only thing I crave is ramen / So much so, when my economist / asks me what I want for dinner / there is only ever one answer / I don’t even know why he asks anymore / I guess it’s one of our rituals / And I might change my mind / after all, there were those three years / when all I wanted to eat was laksa.

So now this poem contains that as well,

but only in a nostalgic, past particular way.

This poem also contains my economist, 

at least the parts of him that asks me / what I want for dinner, and the part of him  / that is unquenchably hopeful / that sees the world as a rational problem  / of limited resources and unlimited wants  / and if we could only find the right model / we could solve the problem with Pi / I also think pie solves most problems / especially on those frigid nights  / when the cold makes my toe itch / My itchy toe is also in this poem.

So is pi(e).

This poem contains ramen,

with the kind of ramen soup that / clings to the rounded back of spoons / wraps noodles, wraps my lips / in hot, delicious fat, dances on my tongue / with umami. This poem now contains a taste / that didn’t even exist before it was  / discovered? created? by the inventor of MSG / What did we taste before we had a word for it? / Could we taste it at all? / Could I invent another taste right now? / Inside this poem? I bet I can / Seus. (The ’s’ is silent.)

I declare it to be (in this poem).

It’s the taste of being at the park / and seeing a kite fly so high and so far / that all of the the sky and the grass  / and the dogs running / and the joy of all things far and wide / and beyond your reckoning / pours into your soul through your mouth / That’s seus (the ’s’ is silent) / Now here come the hipsters and clever chefs / searching for the taste of seus (the ’s’ is silent) / They are having conferences in this poem / authoring research papers, fanning controversy.

Is seus real? Is it mass hypnosis? 

You could say its cheating 

putting my own-self into a poem.

It only proves how much of a noodle I am.

Yet Thomas put his whole dying father 

into a poem, into a villanelle no less,

that dying father more alive than most people I know

living outside of poems.

I am no Thomas, so I must cut my cloth

to fit myself. And besides, I couldn’t bear it,

if I accidentally suffocated someone else

in my poem.

But it’s not so bad, inside this poem.

After all, it contains ramen.