10 Ways of Looking at a Happy Meal

Un-Wallace Stevens’isms

Among a bunch of colorful boxes
The only thing moving A chicken McNugget.

A child is one,
A child and a Happy Meal
are one.

A forty year old man Devouring
its small child-like body
Trying to recapture his lost youth,
The cholesterol, dripping from his bristled chin,
Playing with the Barbie toy.

I do not know which to prefer–
A nap in traffic
Or a Happy Meal.

When the Happy Meal Shimmied
Down the digestive tract,
it marked the edge of many food chains.

Child, why do you only take one Bite
leaving maggots
And critters to feast upon its sumptuous
government-beef by-products?

It strikes a child ill,
Up comes a whisker
Up comes a lung,
the Happy Meal
Never ceases to mystify us.

O thin men of Tofu,
Why do you dream of vegetables?
Do you not see how the Happy Meal
dances on your plate?
Can you not taste its hidden pleasures?

I know Salmonella.
And amoebic dysentery.
But I know, too,
That the Chicken McNugget is
Involved in what I know.

All of Life’s secrets
Lie beneath the grizzle layer,
Waiting to be regurgitated,
like an owl pellet,
or something.

by me in the 7th grade