Prose Poem: Fried Cheese Curds from Amanda Hess.

 

In Wisconsin they have fried cheese curds.

With a conniving oily sour taste.

Every county fair has 'em.

I lived off 'em all summer long.

As a feral child.

 

I was abandoned by my parents

while we were in Green Bay

during the big game.

They told me to go get a Coke

and when I came back they were gone.

 

 That's the story I told Amanda Hess

one night at a party in Oshkosh.

I don't think she believed me. 

But every Xmas since then

she sends me a box of fried cheese curds.

 

I hear she's a reporter out East.

That she lives in a house 

that's floats over the Hudson,

held up by a blimp.

And she never uses the same pencil twice.

 

Me, I repair bent tokens

for the Milwaukee Transit Company.

I never met anyone as interesting

or as compassionate as Amanda Hess --

before or since.

 

If you're ever out East 

and meet her, you might

tell her that the shipped

fried cheese curds she sends

me always get stolen

off my front porch nowadays.