is a polarizing, stepped-on chicken patty in a bun,
breaded flatworm of nostalgia
or
repudiation,
breading like grit, roughing up the roof of your mouth,
or
breading like soggy salted cardboard,
mostly breading, really,
foot-shaped like a Converse Chuck Taylor,
except not that cool,
shaped like the iron that stamps the finishing touch
on each loaf cut prior to freezing,
or
it’s like drugs,
cut and churned with unadvertised carbs, stepped on
so many times aint no chicken flesh left within,
some people got a habit,
some gotta have it;
this is either a tribute to the breaded, oblong protozoan patty
or
you might as well put this poem in a bun and eat it.
————

Heather Brown Barrett is a poet and an imp making mischief in Virginia. Wait, she didn’t mean imp, she meant IMP: Important Mothering Person. She mothers her young son, and contemplates the meaning of life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband. Her poetry has been published by AvantAppal(achia), The Ekphrastic Review, Superpresent Magazine, Backwards Trajectory, and by SEZ Publishing. She has work forthcoming in OyeDrum Magazine.