[Tony Barnstone]

I Roll Myself like Dice, Praying that I Lose

When I consider what accumulates
as time erodes the universe, I poke
the herniated fat that grew from plates
that should have held arugula or póke.
Like a fat horse on the carousel of day,
I spin through hunger cycles. No more talk!
I can no longer justify the way
I grunt upright and wobble when I walk.
And so I learn uh-uh, and nah, and nope,
do chin-ups, sit-ups, avoid Reese’s Cups,
and toss myself at the dartboard of hope,
and swallow myself–wolf that eats its pups.
I whittle down my body with this knife
because the dice say die. I starve for life.



Subbed in Reese’s Cups for Buttercups.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

This is good Tony. I will be back.

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Tony,

I hope we can help you get this new year's resolution ready in time. I thought everything made sense and held together except "buttercups." No other image came to my mind than the flower and both Googling and dictionary consultation did not find any reference to containerized pats of butter, and I couldn't make sense of giving up a flower as a dietary restriction. From what I read, they are poisonous and cannot even be used in healthy salads. There were quite a few cafes and restaurants with the name, however, as well as uses as a term of endearment. How about "Reese's cups"?

All the best,
JIm

[Tony Barnstone]

Thank, Jan. Jim, you are so right. That was a mental glitch on my part. Reese’s is a great sub.

[Alexandra Baez]

A break from philosophy, I see. This is a pretty viscerally funny evocation of overindulgence. Wow! I can almost feel the fat pouring forth. (Your photo doesn’t support the veracity of this, though, lol.)

The title is captivating, but the poem abandons, at least overtly, the dice metaphor until the last line. Which dice exactly is the n metaphorically rolling? In the bulk of the poem, fat seems to be the only thing that’s rolling, and the dice, with their small, geometric rigidity, seem to me a distraction from the overall feeling of the poem.

Interesting poke/póke “rhyme” (which I guess technically wouldn’t even be a half-rhyme, but I think the humor here excuses that). Nice fat-feeling spondee on “fat horse” and tripping anapest on “on the car-.” And funny litany of new learned phrases of denial. How about some trochaic sub for “avoid” like “bypass” to keep the meter in that line? The following “[a]nd toss myself at the dartboard of hope” is certainly a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may meter, which, while it suits the line’s message, falls into tetrameter with its three feet of subs. Might you modulate this enough to at least keep the pentameter? “And swallow myself” is an interesting conceit with a nice metrical evocation of swallowing, but “a wolf that eats its pups”—if the n swallows himself, then the pups are symbolic of himself, apparently? That metaphor feels a bit strained. “[b]ecause the dice say die”—interesting wordplay, but again, this dice reference picks up a metaphor that doesn’t seem to have been developed and that is a bit mysterious once examined. “I starve for life,” which intrigues with its double meaning, plays nicely against “die.” But I suspect there’s a better way to do that.

[David Callin]

Is that an intentional echo of Milton in the opening line, Tony? I expect it is, but a self-ridiculing one.

I'm trying - rather squeamishly - to picture "the herniated fat that grew from plates" - what is this, and how is it growing?

And I don't know what "arugula or póke" are. (Clearly, I should get out more.)

The rest of it I like - at least until we get to the dartboard of hope and the wolf that eats its pups, which seem an unlikely pairing. But I do like the closing couplet.

So it's a mixed dish for me. But the bits I like, I like.

Cheers

David

[Susan McLean]

Witty and fun. In L10, if you use "pass up" instead of "avoid," you'll have a nice chain of "ups." You might rearrange L7 to vary how your lines start: "No longer can I justify the way." For L12, I might suggest "consuming myself: a wolf that eats its pups."

Susan