Vanilla scoops top milky roofs,
slide down in the rich heat of noon.
Every tongue stretched to every abode—
a custom lascivious, neighborly.
All the children stoutish. The adults pallid
soft shadows in rubber boots
plodding through sweet puddles.
Gleaming gutters funnel melted run-off
into barrels for animals, fattening
themselves sick.
The daily ritual of heaping more
where thawed spots show
shared by strong armed maidens
in smeared aprons. Let us pray.
Each window of the church of Our Lady
of Chocolate Marshmallow Nut
glows blue, cool, votiveless
as a walk-in freezer.
A coconut flake hayrick heaped high.
The mayor’s storehouse stuffed
with espresso chip, spumoni,
peppermint bon bon bricks that flirt
with their own liquescent demise.
If you wander into the square
the clock tower bell’s
iron-tongued peals will stick
to the roof of your mouth—
too much sugar in the sky,
too much cream in the clouds.
They say that when the first giant wafer
was hoisted to the top of the general store
this became a place of intolerable vice
and corruption.