donuts

“To find inner peace, search deep inside yourself. Is there a donut there? If not, take corrective action.” ~ Anonymous

When the going gets tough, the tough eat donuts —

(and they read good poems). 🙂

Welcome to Poetry Friday at Alphabet Soup!

I was thinking the other day — as ~~aging dessert maniacs~~ conscientious bloggers are wont to do — about the guilt factor that comes with eating sweets.

With age and unceremoniously acquired girth, this guilt steadily increases. Bad for your health! Too much sugar! Put that cookie down. Now.

Sigh.

Times are tough. What’s a non-smoking teetotaler supposed to do? Why, pick up a copy of The Book of Donuts, of course! This delightfully sprinkled confection of a poetry anthology, edited by Jason Lee Brown and Shanie Latham, contains fifty-four poems by fifty-one poets for your nibbling, chewing, scarfing, and feasting pleasure.

And every single one of them is calorie free!

The poems do brim with emotion, insight, reflection, and candor, illuminating how this humble pastry figures in our everyday lives.

Today I’m happy to share a sample poem by Seattle-based poet Martha Silano, who so artfully describes that sense of deprivation many of us feel. I’m just glad I don’t live near a Voodoo Doughnut shop, or I’d be in BIG trouble.

*“Krispy Kreme Dozen” by Joel Penkman (2011)*

What can I say that hasn’t been said

about the old-fashioned glazed, the buttermilk bar,
the feather boa, the maple blazer blunt? Truth is,

I eat them rarely, less than once a year. I hadn’t
considered my ascetic life till I sat opposite

a woman smiling and moaning as she licked
each spoonful of tiramisu. What’s become

of the kid who ate so much Rocky Road
she made herself sick? I want to be that girl,

oblivious of the connection between indulgence
and a thigh’s girth, between powder-sugared lips

and the needle on a scale, but I am so far gone,
so not a sensualist as I jog past Voodoo Donut

where the bearded and the tattooed, the pierced
and the ski-capped, wait for their Dirty Snowballs,

their Tangfastics, their Raspberry Romeos.
I’ve overdue for a Pot Hole, a Diablos Rex,

to down an entire bag of Sprinkle Cakes,
my mouth transformed to an icing rainbow.

Where is that me who raced to the front door
when her uncle showed up with the box

of Dunkin’ Donuts, eager to devour the goopiest
jelly, the most velvety Bavarian Kreme?

~ by Martha Silano, from The Book of Donuts, edited by Jason Lee Brown & Shanie Latham (Terrapin Books, 2017).

*Voodoo Doughnuts photo by Anna Maybach/5280)*

Like Martha, I might eat a donut at most once a year. Of all the treats out there, I feel guiltiest about donuts. Yes, I ate one of the donut props in the first photo. I dutifully made this great sacrifice on your behalf. 😀

What’s your relationship with donuts? What is your favorite kind?

After you’ve licked the glaze off your fingers, please add your links to Mr Linky below. Enjoy all the posts by your fellow poetry lovers. Thanks for joining us this week!