Danny Jacobs,
"Fatberg"

The news under London: a boulder of lipids
corks the downtown’s sewers; bus-sized bolus
of sumped grease gone dense as rock blocks the Styx,
the stony arches of a wastewater duct.

Our collective cacophilic nightmare
given form—the loo’s accrued Cthulhu
throbbing fat and wet wipes, septic, tumour
of oil clot incanting Cacus Stercus Coenum.

I’m thinking of you, Congealed One, on this
get-things-done Sunday, the fridge cleaning
the last niggling tidbit of gagwork on our list.
Smorgasbords and stroganoffs bloom grease spoors,

hold the molds of their dishes, undersides
stamped with a Pyrex cartouche. Last month’s craving
is tonight’s foul conjecture, leftovers
left indefinitely in the limbo of the crisper

sucked down porcelain’s smooth and jawless maw.
What plastic packed effluvia too taboo to flush
have we sent to the forking paths beneath us?
Stumped, we shrug, spout, Out of sight, out of mind.

In sleep, our slowcooked pork silts our ventricles,
sets to plaque for a future bypass,
and fissile waste stacked like whiskey casks
glows like nightlights in rooms below the sea.

 

As in The Malahat Review, 190, Spring 2015, 22