I fall apart now.
I drip
onto a plate
underneath me.
I can’t help it.
The fire is warm.
I am so sleepy,
and I lack arms
to get myself
back together.
We are inside,
the things
that used to be
outside.
I think I used to be
a cow, or inside a cow,
or some part of a cow.
I don’t know, but there
was grass somewhere
and I seem to remember
its taste. Maybe
sunlight also.
But now
there is this fire.
It unlocks the sun
I have held.
The sheets of something
next to me used to be
cow, too, but different.
They try to talk to me,
but I can only catch
a word or two,
because we are so
different, and so much
has happened since
the time when we were
cows. The potatoes
and gherkins, I don’t
even bother with.
They just say
their own names
over and over again,
and it seems to me that
we should forget
our names, now that
(as I believe) we will soon
become people.
For NaBloPoMo and PAD Challenge, Day 19 (prompt: write a wheel poem).
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 
What an amazing persona poem! (How on earth did you think to write in the voice of a *cheese*?!?) I love the transformations the poem traces–and how in the end all these cows and plants are to “become people.” And my favorite image: how the fire “unlocks the sun / I have held.”
If I may say so, you are on an astounding writing streak.
Thank you so much, Jennifer! In the travel section of our paper, there was an “apres ski” scene of a wheel of raclette melting by a fire. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the prompt to write about a wheel. I liked thinking about how food might feel about being eaten, and what conception it has of its past and future. Sometime after I wrote it, I thought of adding a stinger ending about how the cheese will clog someone’s heart, but the cheese is so philosophical about everything, and I thought this would change the tone too much.
Thanks again! One great thing about a month of daily prompts is that it gets you thinking in ways you wouldn’t otherwise — this particular poem is not one that I had any idea about before the prompt.