Asphyxiation By Cheese-Boarding Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

The suspended block of goat cheese
in the pit smelled so bad there was no
escape from it. Even the old makeshift

too short of a ladder propped against
the wall must have been made for a
French gnome and the enclosure

was so high the sky couldn't be
seen except for a small dot way out above
as far as my Yankee eye could see.

So pungent and oppressive was the smell
issuing from two opposite openings
where the rope was threaded to form

a yoke that I felt I was odor-boarded
in payback fashion for my Iraq misdeeds.
Help! No Exit wrote Jean Paul Sartre

as he was kissing Simone.

~~~