Dished Out In Scoops Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

Furnace-hot,
as we breathe in scoops
of heavy wind.

Air dishes out
bird song
in small scoops.

And the sky scoops out
fuscia and ivory
in patches of stringed

clouds, leaving
in a still glassy air
a large corridor

to a door and window
after a door
to a silvery sky.

(ii)

A sun-wet man
with a scoop shovel
who's been
hollowing out
a mound of earth

races to a lady
running an open air restaurant

in a plastic-covered
basin of food
under an umbrella shade.

The man bawls out
he suffers from a crater
in his stomach,

which he must fill,
or else, a volcano
of unfilled hollows
full of dark clouds will erupt

into scoops of pewter
and charcoal clouds
from a fire to burn
her into ashes and smoke.

(iii)

"Toss over your dish
and you'll eat tons of rice
to swell you
into a bursting balloon",
the lady groans.

With only a clay-covered
scoop shovel,
the man ignites flames

for a howling and growling
fire that hurls him

through the crowds
to have his shovel

scraped and brushed
and polished
to shine with the sun's rays

and beams, putting a glow
on the on the silver tool
in the steel hand of a man.

(iv)

In the furnace
of his barks
and stretching groans
for food, he bulldozes

his way through
other waiting customers.

And returns with a gardener's
scoop shovel

carrying a mountain
of rice and fish he cannot
scoop out to a finish
in a thousand spoonfuls.