Can we have our cake and eat it too? The best poets are able to take such common expressions, even clichés, and make us marvel at a fresh, new application. Stephen Kampa does this constantly, and in this poem about the ultimate threat to our planet—nuclear war—he manages to recast disaster as a birthday party. “Tearing sky-blue paper,” the bombs “in due time” reduce a “branchless tree” to a toothpick we might place in the mud, like a cake, “to see if/ finally the world is done.” It’s done, and it isn’t: because we’re eating up this poem. — Mary Jo Salter
Have It, Eat It
What I expect
to see at the end
isn’t the moon
gray as a dusty plate
or red as
a party balloon let go
because its holder
just couldn’t wait to open
her first gift,
tearing sky-blue paper the way
the sky itself
will be torn to celebrate
in due time
with apt atmospherics the day
we all were
born, nor dune upon dune
of radioactive sand
blowing in a staticky hiss
like a radio
tuned to all the news
we’ll miss once
the party’s over and everyone’s
gone, but this:
one bare, branchless tree, straight
as the barrel
of an enormous gun, stuck
like a toothpick
in the cakey, sun-warmed mud
to see if
finally the world is done.