Meat: Horrid & Otherwise

In the middle of the anthology edited by Mark Strand [The Golden Ecco Anthology: 100 Great Poems of the English Language] there is Melville's "The Maldive Shark" which has striking ending epithet for the maritime beast:

Pale ravener of horrible meat

In the middle of another anthology there is a hunger of a different sort:

I have broken the sound barrier of morality
with one crunchy bite on the phallic biscuit.
In my boyish womanhood, with my soul in drag,
I have been personal concubine to hundreds
of queens and princes, mistress of many
hedonists, lover of all.

The poet is William Barber. The poem, "The Gay Poet" collected by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard in A Day for a Lay: a century of gay poetry.

And so for day 1245
11.05.2010