I ate a Raymond Carver
at the Press Club Café 
It tasted good: smoked salmon, spinach
tomato, shallots, fresh dill.

If I ate you,
Raymond Carver,
would I write like you?
Minimal, genuine, chiseling
flesh-and-blood characters:
living, struggling, working, 
always longing for something or
someone.

I’d like to hold a blind man’s
hand, draw a cathedral,
throw all my furniture on the
lawn, or peer through a locked
door, like a hungry, 
horny neighbor.

I long for someone that 
I can touch
but cannot hold.
I wonder if I write like you,
Raymond Carver, would I 
die a cancerous death?

I reach for a cigarette
and feel despair.

I think I’ll take a bite of Henry Miller
and Anaïs Nin:
Nutella, candied nuts, whipped cream.