✷
Monday, 6:19 AM: Blazing hot and full-bodied with a lingering smoky aftertaste. The backs of my eyelids are ashtrays at a 1950s USO dance. Pain scale: 8/10.
Monday, 6:37 AM: Aftershocks. The last drops of magma from the eruption dripping on my tongue like coffee into a trucker’s sixth cup of the morning. A rough, oaky finish. Pain scale: 5/10.
Monday, 3:46 PM: Acidic but watery, like diluted vinegar. The body spreads and intensifies. A cheese grater doused in lemon juice dragging slowly across my throat. Pain scale: 7/10.
Tuesday, 12:40 AM: If Poseidon branded whales like cattle with the cold burn of his trident, it would feel like this—cold, sharp, and metallic. Notes of divine wrath are subtle like Neptune wants to maintain plausible deniability that this is business and not pleasure for him. Pain scale: 10/10.
Wednesday, 2:18 PM: An octopus clinging to my face, its arms tight around my skull. Its beak latched on, first to my left temple, then my right. A spicy nose, a silky texture, and a bitter yet complex flavor. Pain scale: 7/10.
Friday, 5:12 PM: Out of nowhere like a landmine that triggers a landslide. Shrapnel and gravel in everything. Extremely dry. Primary aromas are earthy yet metallic. Secondary aromas are pine and burnt toast. Over abruptly, as if a pile of mattresses was placed over the jagged rocks at the bottom of the fall by a merciful deity. Pain scale: 8/10.
Friday, 10:36 PM: The sensation of being awoken from sleepwalking on a highway by a car crashing into me, knocking me into the path of a bus, then a train. Earthy notes overpowered by a cacophony of caustic screeching. A finish like a grand piano dropped on a cartoon villain. Pain scale: 10/10.
Friday, 11:15 PM: Quite dark on the outside. Somehow darker in the center. Not aged in a neutral vessel. My palate is a gutted cathedral, but I can identify bitterness beyond reckoning in the watery meniscus. The foamy legs are somehow non-Euclidean. The texture is grainy. Hints of the pomegranate seeds Persephone was deceived into eating. There is no finish to speak of. Pain scale: 11/10.
✷
Edward Cody Huddleston was born in New Jersey and raised in Georgia, where he now works as a radio DJ. He's a poet of both free verse and Japanese short forms. His work has appeared in more than 100 publications worldwide and won dozens of awards. His debut haiku collection, Wildflowers in a Vase, is available from Red Moon Press.
twitter.com/echuddleston
