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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2010 : James Roderick Burns
HOT DOG AND BUN: A SEDOKA DUET (NATHAN'S FAMOUS, 2001)
The scene...could well have occurred 50 or even 80 years ago, at the hot dog stand Nathan Handwerker set up at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island. The idea was to sell food made of quality ingredients—Handwerker insisted on all-beef franks—at aggressive prices to the hungry masses swarming out of the subway to bathe at this proletarian Riviera.—
—Long Island Business News, "Best of the Wurst"
Call me Tsunami—
on the list of contestants
Takeru Kobayashi
appears, icecap cold
in this creaking world of girth,
but I flow warm as saki.
*
In the game of flesh
I slip past all contenders—
bratwurst, dumplings, roast pork buns
each extruded thing—
to burst through the open lips
of your warm and bready smile.
*
Tsunami, I will!
From the warm-folded centre
of my self I sing your name,
rejoice in plenty
for I have tasted only
crumbs on the earth's bony road.
All comers—I stand
a five foot eight inch challenge
to your American might.
Hidden Pearl Harbor,
I liberate no payload
but still lay waste to your arms.
*
I have followed you
from Nagano sushi bars
to the wastes of Long Island,
opened doors for you,
baked my limbs in your deep fires
yet you shine at such distance.
*
Tsunami, I yearn
for the unrolling liquid
splendour of your muscled tongue—
my dry core, yeasty
with desire, cries out to be
slathered in love's sweet mustard.
Quiet follower!
The platform rises, dough-bright
and laden; giants gather
as the dogs lie down
for slaughter, and your silent
presence moves me to my task.
*
Tower of hunger,
brick up my heart as the grit
settles into the oyster
and I will engulf
your most insatiable throat
in a balm of devotion.
*
Now all concentrates
to this thirty foot table—
hot dogs and buns and arc lights
sharp as pins, the crowd's
bastard hypothalamus
tweaking its belt for the off.
Twelve minutes of hell—
ringed by a fierce horseshoe crowd
I start at the gate's clang, fall
to a foul nosebag
of squirting processed offal
and thunder through my first ten.
*
Snap, suck but don't chew—
Solomon could not have split
his babies any faster
or paralleled them
down his gullet—dip the bun
and wincing, wiggle round it.
*
I write sedoka
as these American oafs
chase down your slender whirlwind—
ten and you falter,
thirteen and the Uncle Sams
crush you to tanka, haiku.
Ah, butter stinkers!
Monsters and vile ruminants!
I see your whale-jaws chomping
through oceans of fat—
great lakes of drink—in a wide
one way tunnel of excess.
*
Is this why I came?
Look—a chastened scarlet sun
disappears from whence it rose.
No, slim hurricane—
I am your sun, your bright moon
and all the circling stars.
*
For me you must chew
the globe—this festering ball
of limitless indulgence
as though it was quite
the most exquisite repast,
and worlds hung on each mouthful.
From the blinding light
a small Kasumi voice—eat!
Hoofs fall from my ears. I eat.
At fifteen, a gasp—
bears and elephants stumble
clutching their aching stomachs.
*
For one clean second
this vision—bellies bursting,
towels tossed into the ring
then ah!—tottering
the guts regroup and paddle
for the neon finish line.
*
Like some Chevrolet
rubbed clean by the spandex breasts
of a suburban car wash,
the opulent square
of a sprinkled desert lawn
I sail serene to the zone.
With terrible speed
the hand draws all to the mouth—
split frankfurter, dripping bun,
an assembly line
of hunger. Like a deft fox
I skirt the leavings of bears.
*
Twenty, twenty five.
Records drip on the concrete
with the stink of hot vinyl—
in the gallery
mouths drop as the tally man
runs out of pre-printed cards.
*
I break thirty, more—
forty and soon forty five.
Women swoon, men start to duel.
In some distended
universe the gods slacken
their belts, belch admiration.
Fifty—the crowd shrieks,
sighs; American triumph
withers in the long shadows.
For you have swallowed
their pride, my love. Come with me—
sing in our empty palace.
This poem won an honorable mention in the 2010 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Author James Roderick Burns received a cash prize of $75. Read more about sedoka, a Japanese poetic form, here.
About James Roderick Burns
James Roderick Burns was born in the northeast of England in 1972. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he completed a Ph.D at the State University of New York in 1999 before returning to the United Kingdom. In 2009 he graduated with distinction from the Creative Writing programme at Oxford University. He currently lives in Edinburgh with his wife and daughter, who don't think he is funny at all.
His collections The Salesman's Shoes and Greetings from Luna Park are published by Modern English Tanka Press. He has edited two poetry anthologies for Other Poetry Editions and is the author of a short fiction chapbook, A Bunch of Fives (Mudfog Press).
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