by Jamie Brown
Isn’t my heart
done when it’s al dente?
Use the fork to flip it
on the grill
spitting and hissing as red drops
brown, blacken, smoke
and burn, turn
red again, yellow
against gray charcoal
dust; but it’s how
they like it
black-and-blue
raw and bloody inside
charred crisp outside.
Jamie Brown has been a homemaker, an electrician, handyman, short-order cook, boat ramp operator, assistant manager of a bowling alley, a dispute resolution specialist and Public Affairs Officer for the BBB, and an adjunct college professor for over a dozen years at George Washington University.
Jamie taught the first creative writing workshop (in poetry) at the Smithsonian Institution and is a prize-winning poet (Best Book of Verse 2013, and Best Chapbook of Verse, 2019, Delaware Press Association). A chapbook of poetry, Aftermath, has just been released by Moonstone Press in Philadelphia, and Jamie’s poetry has been published in 35 publications in the U.S. and Hungary.
Jame is CEO of Broadkill Publishing Associates, LLC, which publishes chapbooks under the Broadkill Press imprint, and full-length collections of fiction and poetry under the Broadkill River Press imprint.