You flourish a ceramic jar
labeled “Plumtree Home Potted
Meats” and challenge me to name
the book in which it features.
Everyone knows Ulysses
with its sexual puns and slang,
but who remembers who’s condemned
to eat that tasteless processed beef?
Cooked on Railway Street in Southport,
Plumtree’s meat-mush, we’re assured,
“represents Bloom’s frustration
with his job, his home, and marriage.”
As Bloom reads the newspaper
he conjures up cannibalism,
Kosher rules, and slaughterhouses.
You look comfortable in the center
of your antique shop, your wares
trickling down from Quebec
and lounging in your shop for months
or years before tourists cart them
to New Jersey or New York.
Since Canada still honors
the queen when she appears,
clutching her white leather purse,
objects from the British Isles
often appear in your stash.
Old Ireland, though, recedes in time,
the Republic gradually shedding
the strictures of the priesthood
that strangled Dublin for centuries.
Potted meats no longer required
to represent marital duties.
You want too much actual money
for this antique jar. I’ll pass.
Joyce died well before I was born,
and mice ate the last shreds
of potted meat from under the bed
while Molly lay aghast with pleasure
and her lover discreetly retired.
