Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Tuesday Poem: Appetite: or, an Allegorical journey

o come to where the Fat Dog wags
its nimble backside, where you’ll be glad
you rolled your rotund form on
in through the door, the
rolling slippy slidy wooden floors
where waitstaff glide
waists pinched and arms long
with heavy jowled food, warm lumpy cups
of coffee, plates indigestive
with chocolate cake.

Come to where the cream is piled high as an iceberg,
swerve to avoid creaking chairs
as schoolgirls sail upon
their swooning love affairs.
For your own chair sits
beside the potbellied stove
which has swallowed a fire
much too big for it. Stay, guest;
but not too long – for they say
we make our own nests; and then we must lie in them.

Slipping sliding, the hippy trippy
waitress slides along olive oiled
avenues towards you. You consume her
as you have already consumed the grape painted walls,
the twisted chandeliers, the candles, the poetry painted above the toilet. You consume
her, whole, in her tight black T-shirt with the Fat Dog wagging its brisk tail until the
end. You lick the fat globs of cream off his backside and belch wholeheartedly, for
your heart is not yet in its last convulsions. You drip silver drooled coins through
the hands of the man at the coffee machine and then you jangle merrily on your way
through the door.

The Fat Dog Cafe is probably one of the best cafes in the country and my favourite place to eat in Rotorua. In my first year as a doctor, I worked at Rotorua Hospital - one of the defining periods of my life and a year when I really grew up. With my flatmates, we were "regulars" at the Fat Dog - going there once a week, as a treat or when we couldn't be bothered cooking and just wanted to lounge around in front of the fire and eat chunky lasagne and garden-crisp salad with gobs of mayonnaise....

3 comments:

Paul Tobin said...

I think you paint a very full and sensual picture of The Fat Dog Cafe, such a shame I live miles away in Taunton. There are some lines in the piece that I like alot-"heavy jowled food", "Slides along olive oiled avenues" "Plates indigestive" "Drip silver drooled coins". You capture the textures and tastes, the movement and the dynamics of a busy, popular eatingplace well. My only bit of constructive fedback would be the last verse feels out of step with what has gone before. The first two verses are 10 lines long the last is 14 and denser than the other two, images overspill, as full as I am sure I would be if I ate there. Anyway thanks, I enjoyed the poem.

Piokiwi said...

Thanks Paul! Actually the last verse is the same number of lines as the other two - it's just that the lines are longer, and Blogger creates enjambment where there is none.... but thanks anyway for the lovely feedback!

Claire G said...

Love this! And I know it can't just be because I'm on a weight-loss diet. What are the details of your Pah Homestead reading, please? (Time, is it part of something else, etc.)