Four Course War Path — M.A. Dubbs
poetry ☆
poetry ☆
What are these conflicts
if not hors d'oeuvres
of the blood feast to come?
Small plate, tapas
are the invisible lines on an ancient map,
barriers only seen through a green haze
and territory claims finger foods for
the stomach of hungry tyrants and
the gluttons for old thrones.
Next we’ll have a light side,
perhaps a salad mixed with generational grudges
or an acidic soup to choke down hard breads
and even harder times.
We’ll pair the meal with a beverage,
a rich, floral white wine
because soon water will be scarce
and even the tap will become vintage.
Perhaps we’ll order an appetizer
to kill for time,
stall for some Cold War stand off,
a little show you mine, show me your warheads
until the waiter breaks out the full course.
But once the plates are set
we cannot stop.
We must consume until the bellies swell
pain after profits
and the check will come
and in the end, like a good little Lannister,
we all must pay off our debts.
We’ll fill on cold cuts of stiffen corpse
and the last grain of barren land
blasted by a billion dollar bomb.
We’ll crunch the last snap pea
picked between landmines
and slurp the last clam
before it was boiled in a hot pot sea.
Every food is exotic
when everything is a dying breed
on a radiated scorched earth.
It’s a last meal execution
as boiling tide presses against the glass,
pushing hollow, sunken faces into view;
from life raft to death bloat
the ghosts of Earth’s past
have come to witness the end.
But before the glass breaks,
let us partake in dessert for one last time:
a small parfait shooter
filled with folded currency,
tossed with depleted uranium and SR-90,
and topped with an Agent Orange flambé.
And when the water bursts in,
we’ll feign surprise as
golden pockets weigh us down
and we’ll sink into rainbow slicks on raging waves.
Oil! Our most precious pre-historic possession.
What a miraculous discovery to end the agape!
we’ll praise as we choke on industrial lube,
drowning in the slurry of a war crime:
the last and most abhorrent one of all.
M. A. Dubbs is an award-winning Mexican-American and LGBT poet from Indiana. For over a decade, Dubbs has published writing in magazines and anthologies across ten countries with notable publications including Penn Review, Oyster River Pages, & Pacific Review, among many others. She is the author of four poetry collections with her latest released in 2025 with Dancing Girl Press.
