Lines on A Page, B.D Fischer

In the best
of all possible worlds
the pig and the chicken
are one, flippable,
in a cast-iron skillet (which takes on now
a cowboy history, and I imagine
the imagination
of cracking an egg in a pot of coffee
before plunging the press
of a foreign country, and
enjoy my meal
more) that can be purchased
but cannot be used
without a handsome length
of preparation. It is
the only thing I know
that is like this.

Victory breakfast—
three sources
of smoke or steam:
pipe, plate, and coffee—
grows cold.
Exhaling, I am the fourth.

This is my return to certainty,
except the better metaphor
is a staff
of quarter-note yolks,
except I don’t play an instrument
and my pen against the page may
(but what about the percussive keyboard?)
make a sound
but no music.

Scraped clean from the skillet,
dripping, unmatched,
draping the cheesy toast on my plate
the lines on the page have grown twisted.
I half-suspect Cash’s remorseless “Mercy Seat,”
but an inquiry into the causes of the sprawling geography of my breakfast distracts

from the pig-and-chicken issues more closely at hand,
or, rather,
more keenly attentive
to my knife
and my fork.