My Little Golden Book of Phobias

Diet

I tell you
I wanted a cookie
one with butter and sugar
a special crackled surface
with bits of submarine and cheddar
not too tasty!

You brought me a burst appendix
radishes with the red rubbed off
a broken minesweeper you said was an heirloom
after they washed off the graffiti
you moved into the solarium

where you ravished the wild hyssop
bottled virulent sunsets in vinegar
brokered manufactured beeches
fletched mice and their harvest mouselings
sunk in the mire

I asked for honey
you proffered lapwings
I craved blunt icing
you fled backhand the arboreal spread
we played hide the sickle

the grass bled green
toads winked in your slippers
I limped back to the big house
with a pan of glisten
welts on my thumbs
and an appetite for rancor