Edible Truth
 
You can, naturally,
eat this poem.

But chew it
carefully.
 
Now,
swallow cautiously. 
 
But don't over-think
the metaphor.
 
 

where do words go in this silence
between us?
 
whole sentences hang like twisted vines
we cannot untangle
 
definitions spin, slide, unexpectedly
as December cars on black ice
 
dictionaries are helpless for usage
vulgar, disparaging, offensive term
 
as spilled ink on silk
stain seeps to both sides indelible
 
love is only one example
but so is loss
 
either as Riesling grapes
on the vine after frost
 
the chill concentrating sugars

Ed Higgins and his wife and three whippets live on a small farm south of Portland, OR where they remain unrepentant holdovers from the early 70s “back-to-the-land” movement. They raise a small menagerie of chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, pigs, Jersey cows, Nubian goats, and a rescued potbelly pig named Odious. He teaches creative writing and literature at George Fox University and his poems and short fiction have appeared in Duck & Herring Co.’s Pocket Field Guide, Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, and Bellowing Ark, as well as the online journals Lily, Cross Connect, Word Riot, The Centrifugal Eye, Contemporary Haibun Online, and Red River Review, among others. Several additional poems can be found here.