Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenios
Alternate Truths/Stoned Soup
A good soup starts with a good pot.
A good pot is one without a hole.
A good hole is filled with onions.
A good onion does not look like a rusty carrot.
A good carrot is not celadon, or green
A good green is unknowing and softer than a stone.
A good stone will not thumbprint the water.
Good water is as hard to find as empty pockets.
Pockets that are full of makeshift music are a good gnaw.
A good gnaw begins in a junk shop.
A junk shop is filled with winged secrets.
A good secret starts with a cockamamie lie.
A good lie starts with a knock-kneed veil.
A veiled need starts with hunger.
Hunger starts and ends with soup.
A good soup starts with a good pot.
A good pot doesn’t have a hole.
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenios is the author of the poetry collection Special Delivery (Yellow Chair Review, 2016). Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Stories of Music, Volume 2; Love Notes from Humanity: The Love, Lust & Loss Collection; and Happy Holidays. Her poems have appeared in the journals The Poeming Pigeon, Clementine, Kentucky Review, Unsplendid, Scissors and Spackle, MockingHeart Review, Noble Gas Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, Folliate Oak and Cumberland River Review, among others.
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