I thought all cold cuts were called meat’n-a-bag.

Eggs over easy, dunkin’ eggs. Listen, it’s aaaigggs.

Nasal it a notch, take out the warsh and come with.

Don’t cringe at vowels hard as a mouthful of marbles.

Cornbread likes to go by his street name: johnnycake.

Dish of my polyestered childhood, City Chicken,

how we clamored for your midwestern mystery meat on a stick

available in chunk or loaf from Wolfert’s Five Starr.

If everything’s mock in lean times—a stand-in, a trick—

did that make our first house a starter home?

Mom’s souped-up purple Hornet a go-to-work car?

We had Rice-A-Roni and sidewalk chalk.

I thought euphemism meant putting the dog down.

My brother, the picker, lined his plate with tiny frescos

of herbs and onion fragments, dreamed of the day

he’d gorge on his own food pyramid: pizza and pizza rolls.

Me, I like just about anything served on a stick.

Melanie Dusseau (OH)  has had work appear in Cimarron Review, Black Warrior Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, River Styx, Verse Daily, and others.