I had a dream last night.
In some odd reality show
exchange program,
Guy Fieri and Bear Grylls
traded jobs for a week.
Grylls was surviving
the dives of West Texas,
never suffering from thirst
as he chugged glass
after glass of ice water.
While listening
to Tres Hombres,
he had all the protein
he could ask for:
pulled pork sandwiches,
steak tacos,
Italian-Mex pizzas
w/ chorizo and
chihuahua cheese.
Conversely,
Guy was dying of thirst
in the Gobi Desert.
Scaling the Flaming Cliffs
and surviving on
the jellied eyes
of rotting Bactrian camels.
His head adorned
with his backwards Gatorz ,
he squeezed the fluid
from a ball of camel shit,
filtered it through his shirt,
and briefly quenched his thirst.
About 655,000 Americans die
each year from heart disease,
Guy tells us,
as he munches on rare
roasted racerunners.
While Fieri stuffed a few
filmy dome spiders
into his mouth,
he reiterated the
heart disease numbers
and wiped a tear
from his eye.
It was hard to keep
those tips so perfectly
frosted in
the Gobi Desert.
Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches literature and writing. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI, with his family. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, About Place, and Fahmidan Journal. He also obsesses over soccer and comic books.