Mr. Wedding Cake
At Fillmore and Elysian Fields
Very first job
At the age of fourteen
Postpubescent dreams
Of what twelve dollars a week can buy
From under the table
To the cash in my pocket
Burning a hole
Just on Sundays
4 AM till noon
But the bakers were there by midnight before
The trays of donuts won't move themselves
No dough is wasted
Even the holes get glazed
Like the one burning my pocket
No donut is wasted
Even the ones that fall from my tray
En route to the front
Bounce on the type of floor
That only a bakery could have
"Good thing it fell on the paper"
But there is no paper! Ha!
Nothing is wasted
Raspberry injections and powdered patina
Doberge masterpieces and red velvet cake
And petits fours and pies for the pie hole
And confections doled out
To the masses attending
Their hourly Masses
Them coming and leaving
Then leaving and coming
In hourly waves
For the ourly faves
26 minutes past each Communion
The body of Christ
And the sugar of Mr. Wedding Cake
Are digested together
Going home with the sweets
And clean souls
For only a week
Till next week
The next Friday and Saturday nights
Push them again
To their Masses on Sundays
And me, the middle man
From the back to the front
From the baking to the selling
From the selling to the banking
Today I remembered my spoon
BIG
As I pass by that vat
FAT
I ready it
A vat where the icing on the cakes
Was planed so evenly
FLAT
Dropping the sugar fallout and trim
The faulty flowers
That don't deserve to be on a
Mr. Wedding cake
Scraped into that vat – my vat
Of multicolored cortices
Of Michealangelo sculptures
Before chipping out saccharine Pietàs
Where my spoon lands squarely
And dives deeply
To render a spoonful of diabetes
Into a postpubescent waiting mouth
Each pass in moving
The trays that won't move themselves
From the back to the front
All the mouthfuls possible but once a week
From 4 AM till noon
My dentist awaits
But banish the thought
And don't bring me down
For a life hyperglycemic
While postpubescent
Is the sweet life worth living
About the Creator
Gerard DiLeo
Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!
Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo
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Comments (3)
Your poem made me soooo hungry! Also, in this line, "All the mouthfuls possilbe but once a week", did you mean possible? Loved your poem!
It is a good thing that this also fell on the paper, as it were.
My first job. My parrain's (godfather's) place, Mr. Wedding Cake, the best bakery in New Orleans. (Eat your heart out, Gambino's!)