Fork

By Charles Simic b. 1938 Charles Simic

This strange thing must have crept

Right out of hell.

It resembles a bird’s foot

Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

As you hold it in your hand,

As you stab with it into a piece of meat,

It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:

Its head which like your fist

Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

Source: Charles Simic: Selected Early Poems (George Braziller Inc., 1999)