In the Kitchen

Early in the morning a dough rises from the bowl

curling upward.

He clenches his fists of bean paste, his mouth

dripping a black cocoa stream    ...    

Hey, I say, have you just smuggled

nine knife mountains and nine oil pans from hell?

Deep-fried ghosts are the sweetest the crispiest the most intelligent

even in burned rims, and taste even better with soybean drinks.

He droops his sad expressions

like Oedipus’s crutch.

Collapsed in the steamer, he squeaks out a sweet smell

of duck soup from his soul — quack, quack.