Holiday Chocolate Open Mic

I’m off to my office holiday party tonight but just wanted to fire off a reminder that I’ll be reading a brand new chocolate holiday poem at Matthew’s Chocolates in glittering downtown Hillsborough tomorrow at 7pm. To whet your appetite, here’s another chocolate sonnet that I read at a previous chocolate open mic.

How do I love thee? Let me taste the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My tongue can reach, when probing out of sight
For the last of the mousse in a crevasse.
I love thee in boxes or upon trays
Assorted flavors over which we fight.
I love thee freely, though money is tight;
I love thee purely, in an endorphic haze.
I love with addiction and abuse
For my old griefs and with my long lost faith.
I love thee with a lust I wish to lose
For my health sake, with diabetic breath,
Pancreas failing until my dark muse,
Chocolate, grants a most delicious death.

About Bartholomew Barker

Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.

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