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THE PANCAKE

 

“…Karamazov, all this grief and pancakes afterward…”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

 

The Pancake

 

Let us have pancakes after grief,

Baptized by boysenberry—butter as sunlight.

Pounds of pancakes. Pillars of pancakes.

Pancake palisades. Pancake precipice.

Bastions of battercake, fortress of flannel cake,

fields of flapjacks, griddlecake galaxies

hotcake hinterlands—call barges of butter

to our ritual after grief—Maple tankers

barreling down the interstate.

 

© 2000 Dan Kantak