Poem 27: taste

Today's prompt asks us to write a poem that deals with the sense of taste.

*
Sorrow

     "Sorrow found me when I was young/ Sorrow waited, sorrow won."
                                                          -- The National

It tastes like aspirin,
powdery and metallic,
burning the back
of your throat,

or a bottle of cheap red wine
that's sat for years,
gathering Jeepney dust,
on a hot shelf in a shabby market
7959 miles from home.

It tastes like the bent metal
of a spoon,
jammed at the back
of a crusty drawer
in the kitchen of the brick house
where you grew up.

It tastes like 4 AM
after a maze chase nightmare,
like cat hair on your pillow,
cat hair stuck
to your wet lips,
or like a dog body
you glimpse from the side of an eye,
buzzing with flies
beside the two-lane road
in spring,
or snow melt pooling
under the dead cedar
in your yard,
a drake and a mallard
paddling in its mud.

Actually, it tastes
like chlorine
from the neighborhood pool
where you sat alone
reading sexed up novels,
imagining you weren't so white
you'd turned invisible,

or like unproductive labor pains
and chronic lower back spasms.

Maybe it tastes like a cardboard kiss
from someone you know
too well,
or urban dirt
and big city concrete,

maybe even pigeon shit,
trash wind,
bus exhaust,
and salty gutters
filled with McDonalds wrappers,
cigarette butts, a child's
tiny shoe.

No. It tastes like
April rain --

bone cold,
tinged with lead and
copper and blood,
it sinks
into your skin,
and it explodes,
cracking you
into a thousand million
stinking pieces.