Street Cannibalism

[Written sometime in 2007]

craving the city

is an incurable disease,
can accommodate
a transient need for food
(just as there are places
in the city
that accommodate
desperate groping and
fleetingsex)
the balut* eggs wrapped
in last year’s
yellow pages,
and rock salt thrashing
about in a paper boat,
eveloped in
inky smudged corners

ii.

squatting next to the
mildly interested cat
he cracks the egg
on the asphalt
gently, quick to suck out
the amniotic fluid

(the joke: the aborted chick’s urine,
last minute excretions of fear
before it dies, and hence
the salty-fishy flavor,
just as they laugh at our corpulent
deposed President
and our poverty)

… slurping loudly until
the chick is bone dry and silent,
the spidery yellowy yolk
for his taking,
swallowed up in salt, eyes
closed as he savors
its gritty-rubbery texture,
briefly:
the vulgarity of the sea
on his tongue

iii.

and he smiles,
(at the day’s wages saved:
a little extra for that field trip
his youngest needs,
to take the tricycle
instead of the lonely walk home)
pleased it was a fresh egg,
and any momentary
discomfort
of half-formed legs,
feathers, beak
would be swallowed up
in the grittiness of salt.