Yellowcake

Forget the gun: it’s Chekhov’s custard pie

that the peephole lens shrinks down around 
and serves on a platter to your hungry eye.

You know in time that pie will cover some sap’s face

like an eyeless mask at a palace masquerade. 

That said, may I present to you: the cake!

This tasty, many tiered monstrosity,

a saccharine ziggurat, chateau sucrée,,

a baked-goods tower of Babel garnished

with a Babylonian garden’s worth of frosted petals,

with more rococo curlicues than a Louis XIV dog kennel.

...and, speaking of dogs, let me introduce the terriers:

enter Becquerel and Boom Boom, rescued from the pound 
by some foolish sucker. (That would be Yours Truly.)

Cute but unruly, they’ve been exiled to the yard until

their whining moves me to pity

and I tenderly spring them, unlatching the door

to the kitchen. Just then, in the next room,

the phone rings. You see where this is heading.

When I return, the cake is on the floor
and the dogs are busy gorging.

Sick with frosting, poisoned by confection,

they have to be put to sleep. It makes me weep,

and I cannot scrub the sticky from the floor.

Of course, there are no cakes like that anymore.

These days, who can afford a stick of butter?

How long has it been since you held an egg 
or saw a pint of milk?

How many years since that pie, flipping through

the unbreathable air, hit its inevitable mark?