Poem about the Pizza Cutters

By William Parks

Thin fingers cut thinner lines, cut three times
A triptych of sides slit slantways. 
Three times three sides cut for the teeth that await them
Desperately crying
“Feed me! Feed me! I’m hungry! Please!”
Idle hands make for starving people
Idle eyes make for a tranquil break
But idle eyes don’t put food on plates
In blue boxes and at doors. As outside
The windows shake, rattle and roar
With white flecks I’ve never seen here before. 

Above, the lights flicker and cough
Snow hides the ones outside
Snow assails the ones within.
Shadows play games with the shapes;
Lights on: a pizza cut perfect, coated and breaded
To aid and to save you.
Lights off: an amalgamation, dark and amorphous, sits
Placidly on my counter; rent and shaped into discus and flung
At the oh so desperate crowd.
“Eat! Please eat! You’re so hungry! We’ll work as fast as we can!”
Idle hands portend starving times.

Lights on again: a hundred hopeful faces I’m trying
So hard to satisfy with flour and with cheese.
The rest are all shut you see? It was us and now it’s just me
Lights off again: A hundred enshrouded figures hunched
And coated in flour, groaning and pleading as I move as fast
As these hands can. The shadows are indiscernible,
Save one and you save all; sleep and save none at all. 
Their thin fingers keep cutting thinner lines, “Carn now! You can do This!
Cut once. Cut twice. Cut three times!” 
Monoliths of food saved to be sold throughout the weekend
Mountains of food gone by the time their shift ends.

Above all we are cheered by the panopticon
Kept digital thanks to quarantine and lockdown
Like, Share, Comment, Subscribe
Like, Share, Comment, Survive
And praise them and commend them because they kept others alive
In this cold not seen since ’35.
Send in the news crews and catch the collapse
Not with hands or with cushions but with pictures and apps
These young heroes of my generation, who with pizza alone
Cut three lines through for Texas’ ablation.

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Written Word ‘Hand’ poems