Welcome to poetryvlog.com
A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.
Escape From the Fat Farm
by Sandy McIntosh
DAY 1: “Cappy”, our dining room host, announces: “You’ll be served delightful low-calorie meals, and you shall lose weight!”
DAY 2: I gaze at my plate. The solitary pea that was on the edge has rolled over the rim and disappeared.
DAY 3: Cappy says beware the alligators in the moat. And keep hands off the rabbits. Delectable, yet their bites are deadly.
DAY 4: The table talk has turned entirely to food—if at breakfast, then about lunch. If at lunch, then about dinner. Then breakfast again. We are insatiable in our talk about food!
DAY 5: We suspect Little Tubby Moran has caught and eaten a rabbit. Our jealousy knows no bounds.
DAY 6: We’ve been debating the best method for capturing an alligator. “Can you whistle and they come?” No. “Can you call them: ‘Hey, alligator! Hey, alligator!” No “And would pan roasting be easier, or stuff it whole into the oven?” Probably neither. “I’d rather have the shoes, belts and handbags,” observes adorable Penelope, but the rest of us know the truth. She’d wrestle an alligator to death, its fritters steaming in the sun, if they’d just let us out of this building.
DAY 7: Our conversations are now whispered because Cappy is watching and listening, his hands clanking metal ball bearings, like Captain Queeg. He is definitely suspicious of our whispering.
DAY 8: The meals get no better. A slight diversion: our waiter, a new daddy, shows off his infant child. This event leaves us quiet, meditative. Our tablemate, Dr. X, an admitted amateur torturer, opines that cleaning, cooking and eating a human infant is as simple as cooking a baby pig. We find this horrible and disgusting, and we tell him so. But this leads to speculation on where we might find a baby pig.
DAY 9: Cappy now appears each night dressed as a pirate, complete with wooden leg. He twirls his pirate’s gun and reminds us by certain gestures that it’s loaded.
DAY 10: Someone serves us the wrong dinner! The menu said Steak with Mashed Potatoes and a Chocolate Milkshake! But all we got was a plate of spoons! Not even a steak knife! Little Tubby Moran complains loudly, but answer gets he none.
DAY 11: We are served a bowl of murky soup made with moat water. An openly hostile Cappy commands: “Get in there with your spoons and row, you blackguards!” And he fires a warning shot across our bow. It is understood that we must now address him as “Captain.”
DAY 12: Little Tubby Moran has disappeared. Nobody says it, but we’re all thinking the same thing: cannibalism. Dr. X is missing, also.
DAY 13: There is open talk of mutiny. The captain has chained us to the deck. We’re fed only low-fat yogurt with the occasional strawberry floating in it. But all we need is the opportunity and Cappy goes down. Then we’ll row ourselves across the moat to freedom and a good brunch.
DAY 14: A terrible storm at sea. Cartons of croutons and little packets of mayonnaise float by, but always out of reach. Penelope says: “Let’s see if we can swim as far as the kitchen. I’ll get a decent meal if I have to kill someone!” We manage this, and are awed. Refrigerators, their shelves weighed down with food, loom. And there is something else. In the blackness a lone figures stands between us and our dinner. It is Cappy aiming his pistol. “I’ll take care of this,” Penelope hisses, darkly determined. “This night we eat!”
DAY 15: Morning sun and quiet sea. At last, it’s all over. Cappy has vanished. The dining room doors have opened. We, tattered survivors, pull ourselves together. Outdoors, a bucolic scene: alligators dozing like armored cars on the moat banks; sounds of tiny sprockets turning inside the bodies of caterpillars. And as we’re led to the scales, we discover to our delight that we have lost weight, exactly as advertised in their brochure, though it’s mostly arms and legs.