The Screaming Sheep
Like a Sliver of Silvered Vine
Dear reader,
take your earrings out
let your lobes glow naked
as pierced dry fruits strung
to this line.
Listen: Stromboli
sounds as good as it smells
as good as it tastes, better than
it feels squelching between
your toes, sauce-red blushing
of your skin, cheese-cheeked
gooing to your sole.
Ah, reader! Alas! Why did
you come all the way to this
poem if only to trod on my
Stromboli? You must comfort
me now. Call to me in voices
of pizza, pizza, pizza, ravioli!
What did you expect to find here,
friend? Come now, let the Stromboli
lie where it’s been lain. We can end
here; we will eat together—the ivory
songs of our teeth munching dirges
like Stromboli, Stromboli, Stromboli,
Stromboli.
Yes. Yes reader, you are right:
we are like angels, the way we chew, our
greasy crust-crumbed smiles, tongues
alive, tongues that live.
Josh Huber
Josh lives in Columbia, MO with his wife Angela. He studies poetry in the Masters of English program at the University of Missouri, where he also teaches. His various works have appeared most recently in Dark Matter, Scissors & Spackle, and The Missouri Review.