My Daddy Was an Omnivore
He drank coffee in the wee hours long before the sun oozed its way up over the hardwoods at the end of the property. He played Solitaire and smoked Camels before he woke all of us up to begin our day. My mother had to be at work by 7. Daddy took care of her like a cake maker, frosting her sides with a thick coating of meringuelike candy, opening the door of my bedroom, asking the same question: What would you like for breakfast? I slept like a bear cub, not sure who this man was interrupting my dreams about girls and flying boomerangs with dogs and wispy clouds. What? I’d ask. Denver omelet or pancakes? One day when I came home from playing down at the railroad tracks with my buddies, I found him crouching in the garden pulling up greenery and placing it in a Tupperware bowl. Dandelions, wild onions, unidentified grass and weeds What are you doing that for? I asked. This is dinner tonight. It’ll be great with those pork chops you like. As it turned out, the salad greens from the backyard weren’t so good for most of the family. My sister refused to touch them, and my mother gagged. Since he always seemed to like me, I decided to humor him and have a taste. Explosion on my tongue, in the back of my throat. Fireworks! No meat required. Transformation like spine Unfriending notochord, transmitting blasts of bovine deliciousness into the atmosphere. I am wild and grazer and hologram of urban sunsets, their lemon essence and citrus aftertaste diffusing into my soul. My mother demanded spaghetti and handmade meatballs. My sister didn’t care because she was in love with a man from the plastic factory. And Trixie, the terrier, ate everything she was offered. I pushed my pork chop aside that evening, but my father urged Don’t give it up…yet. You need both hands to make your dreams come true.
John Dorroh
John Dorroh likes to travel. He often ends up in other people’s kitchens, sharing culinary tidbits and tall tales. “Learning about cultures begins with the food,” he asserts. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Hundreds of others appeared in journals such as Feral, River Heron, Burningword, Kissing Dynamite, North Dakota Quarterly, Penstricken, and North of Oxford. He’s had a book of micro fiction and two chapbooks of poetry published in recent years. Once he was awarded Editor’s Choice Award for a regional journal and received enough money for a sushi dinner for two.
