Dinner for One
Reddened spoons.
Napkins
of aging skin.
A table for none
where once pumped
a hopeful heart.
Foolish from the start
the refreshing glass
of toil-laden piss,
ripened to this-
Vacant meal of me,
mournful dish,
served raw,
upon mirrored plates.
— From Jamal Hodge’s upcoming book, I’m Not A Good Person, I’m A New Yorker.
Author’s Statement:
My poem Dinner For One takes the symbolic activity of togetherness (A dinner at a table) and turns it into a place of loneliness and horror. The grim end result of preparing a meal of yourself within your selfish choices, that leaves you alone without a witness to your life, with nothing to eat but your own stale pride. It was written as a warning of the dangers of not properly valuing others enough to make space for them in your life, which is a hard lesson I personally learned when one day, during the pandemic, I looked at my life and had all these material things, but nothing to share, because I had no one to share it with. I discovered then how important it was to not wait to start sharing your life with a special someone. Because there’s a true horror in loneliness, especially the kind that is self-inflicted when the option to be with others is present.
In otherwards. Don’t eat yourself. Eat others 🙂
Or rather eat with others? You get the point.
About Jamal Hodge
Jamal Hodge is a native New Yorker and an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and poet. A member of the HWA and SFPA, he’s a Bram Stoker Award finalist, a two-time Rhysling nominee, and a 2nd place Dwarf Stars and 3rd place Elgin award winner, and the author of The Dark Between the Twilight, Everything Endless (with Linda D. Addison) and the editor of Bestiary of Blood: Modern Fables & Dark Tales.
Jamal loves the broken things that want to be understood and the secret things that never bothered to hide. With his writing, he hopes to uncover the paradox between suffering and meaning, to use darkness to show light.
When he’s not writing or filming, Jamal is traveling to odd locales, connecting with the youth, or bludgeoning an unsuspecting ear with an endless tide of philosophical dribble.
He fancies himself a pretty cool guy.