Mediterranean Diet The ocean in the middle of the land is ever famished, and omnivorous. It swallowed whole that son of Daedalus who flew too near the sun. Ulysses’ band was decimated. Xerxes’ whole command the sea dispatched like spring asparagus. Phoenicians were its passion. Now it’s us. You’ll find our trinkets washed up on the sand. It isn’t that the sea’s malevolent or drunk or crazy, nor do other gods compel it to its trencherdom. It eats just what it pleases. This seems just. It spent an aeon starved, another choked on hods of clay. Who’ll fault the dieter who cheats?
The Fast One day goes by in silence. Then the next. I’m fasting from both speech and listening. No one can hear me, and I hear no one. The uncles and the grandfathers can run their mouths, the aunties and the grandmas sing their lullabies. I’m neither soothed nor vexed. I’m fasting. And my fast will last until my ears and mouth and mind are clear once more as when hands caught me on the birthing bed and rinsed me free from glaze of yolky red. Things should be put back as they were before the interference started. And they will. Take notice that I’m fasting. Give me space is all I’m asking. Please just read my face.
Dan Campion is the author of A Playbill for Sunset (2022) and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Grand Little Things and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, Think, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in 2023.
Grand Little Things 