I try not eating the chocolate one with sprinkles
and I don’t succeed—my pledge to my diet dies,
but the taste validates my backsliding, the fine
smudge on my lips beautiful as lipstick on a woman.
Someone wrote “the great beauty of the world”—
maybe I did, I can’t be sure—and I believe the words.
I remember the ugly of the past and I know the worst
of the future is already gearing up to make its visit—
I finish the doughnut, clean away the evidence
and head back to the couch to finish a book I love.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 14, Issue 1.
Tim Suermondt is the author of TRYING TO HELP THE ELEPHANT MAN DANCE (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and JUST BEAUTIFUL from NYQ Books, 2010. He has published work in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review and Prairie Schooner, and he has poems forthcoming in Tygerburning Literary Journal and Stand Magazine (U.K.). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
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