Day Ten ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2022

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo suggestion: “Today’s (optional) prompt is pretty simple — a love poem!” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a taste poem.” Today's poem merges the two prompts in what I hope are unusual or at least unexpected ways. Yesterday, I gave a talk on "Writing in Short Forms" — hay(na)ku and curtal sonnets — for Writer's Digest University, so I wanted to write a curtal sonnet today, in case some of those who attended might swing by. For those who may not know, the curtal sonnet, invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is 3/4 of an Italian sonnet (10 1/2 lines), rhymed abcabc dbcdc. Ode to Chicharon Slices of heaven, fried pork fat and rind, pork belly chicharon, just like Mama made. I could smell them in my room above the kitchen. I was probably six, kind of a book nerd, imagining drama: the taste of that meat, gold curlicues of smoke and salt flavors caressing my tongue like huge bells enfolding Esmeralda in Quasimodo’s unrequited love. But for this little boy, a greater thing:                                         my mother’s love. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] As a child, I loved the Classics Illustrated comic books and had The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I can still envision in my mind panels from that comic, and I remember being bemused by the villain's name, Phoebus, which seemed to me not only unusual but also interesting because my aunt was engaged to a guy named Phoebus. My love of pork — and especially pork belly — goes back to my mother making chicharon, my favorite snack. This is different from the chicharrones we have in the US; the Filipino chicharon is thicker, with more layers of goodness, more meat and fat attached to the skin. And yes, in the Filipino word chicharon there is only one R, as opposed to the Spanish chicharrón. Did you think that was a picture of pork belly chicharon? They're actually chicharon keychains! While looking for pictures of chicharon online, I discovered there is such a thing as food keychains! Don't they look good enough to eat? Anyway, today, because of my mom's chicharon, I love extra thick bacon and pork sausage, especially linguica. As an aficionado of pork, I'm lucky to live in Iowa, where the culinary mainstays include huge breaded pork tenderloin and the one-inch thick Iowa chop! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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