Golden Shovel from: “kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks
To be sent up in a fume of smoke would be a dream.
I would be the grease-ridden dish that makes
the father, fresh from the stoop, bar a
night with the belt and grow giddy
with sweet hunger. He would light the
paper-backed coffin nail in his mouth
and sound a rumble buried between his liver,
not unlike the gorges of water stored in the strong
humps of the desert camel, and slew poison like
the channels and stars that pay rent
for commercial slots in your head; a feeding
of the five billion. I would return as a
staple of this country: the wife
you wanted to come home to; the satisfying
silver bullet, which winds its eight-ball luck into a
chamber, with his name: the man, the man.