Cognition In A College Mess Poem by Pradeep Dhavakumar

Money is a strange glass that defines
every man’s vision is what went in

munching drumsticks with friends, at my
college mess. Ruby-ringed Mathew bit

the main meat off his drumstick, sided the rest,
pushed back and exalted “Wow! I am done”.

“Never waste food”, I retold what my father
ingrained in a bourgeois me, and showed

how much meat still resides at the corners,
how to relish those; to make the clean bone.

Nalin smiled at us, chewed, swallowed
the fragile bones and repeated my words.