American Life in Poetry

I love writing poems about the most ordinary of things, and was envious, indeed, when I found this one by Michael McFee, who lives in North Carolina. How I wish I’d written it.

Saltine

How well its square

fit my palm, my mouth,

a toasty wafer slipped

onto the sick tongue

or into chicken soup,

each crisp saltine a tile

pierced with 13 holes

in rows of 3 and 2,

its edges perforated

like a postage stamp,

one of a shifting stack

sealed in wax paper

whose noisy opening

always signaled snack, 

peanut butter or cheese

thick inside Premiums,

the closest we ever got

to serving hors d’oeuvres:

the redneck’s hardtack,

the cracker’s cracker.