It Should Be [r] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Quiet tears of self-pity, for dinner last
night I had Russian kolbasa sausage,
short, oily-cold - its extracting a price;
I'm stuck, head constricting, muscles,
veins, a thread of thorns turned about

Encasing my head in concrete, a statue
of pain, neck stiffening - feeling ill and
turning into a pillar of salt, a basilisk, a
monument to gourmet disgust: how did
life fall and slot into this dark place of

Culinary pains & aches - with a tantrum-
throwing-little-boy's angry demand that
I should take full responsibility for all of
this - fine, I do, the load is crushing me
and so it should be…