June 11, 2008

Poetry: Issue One

Molly Prosser

The Battle at Breakfast

Debbie stacks the toast and carefully cuts the pile into four thick strips. I don’t want
butter this morning – I want my soldiers sharp. It’s the first time I’ve waged war with
a soft egg.

Debbie shows me how to decapitate the head, how to firmly hold the egg cup and whack
off the top of the shell, jam my knife into the albumin and disrupt the yolk. Her thick
Glasgow accent pours over the carnage.

Sometimes, she tells me, she chips away at the outside peeling back layers to expose the
soft core, attacking where the egg is exposed and vulnerable.

Slitting my way through the firm white with my first soldier, I slowly probe the yellow
center. He cuts a path that others will follow. The incision widens as one by one my burnt
battalion gradually descends to the center, absorbing the wreckage, erasing
the traces of war.

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