New Writers Poetry Competition 2023 – 2nd Place
The Fork
by Maxwell Minckler
Caveman sat in the café and considered his fork. She had given it to him for some reason, Caveman was sure. He scratched his scalp with it, and cooed like a child. He used the fork to flip one hand into the other, like a pancake, and enjoyed his cave flavor for the first time. Caveman fenced with the air, met its negligee, its halters and invisible chinks, which he could always sense, but never see. Caveman used the fork to summon up an audience, then discoursed with great authority upon the four points of his utensil. Caveman harnessed the awesome power of calories and rocketed, on fork-back, to the stars. He returned with great wisdom, parlanced galactic, godlike, and inexplicable to the rest of his kind. Caveman was racked with loneliness, and so took the fork to bed, and confessed his greatest imaginings, the secret roots of his fate, to this – his beloved, his mirror. Then the food came. It was soup.
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