Ketchup Chips
Terry Trowbridge
Ares holds an artist’s paint palette in red patina
dry tempera shades made from
the shades wandering dazed nearby their own blood
stirred by his red sword in ashes of their homes
mixed in daubs and swirls
reminiscent of Ares’ greatest victory:
the wars that turned Jupiter’s eternally Earthward eye red.
Ares gives Hephaestus a recipe.
The twisted divine leg adds the force of inertia
of the planets’ rotating liquid planetary cores
(Mars’ of course, long-cold, is not included,
the other inertia, shared by Hades and Saturn, dwelling there).
Hephaestus hammers potato slices.
They fry to a crisp, thin with elegance, oval as spearheads.
Apollo shares his tanning oil with Narcissus.
The oil slakes the sunstruck skin’s thirst, turning burns into bronze.
Easy self-absorbed prey for Eros the invisible pickpocket.
He delivers the SPF amphorae to Ares’ altar.
Ares dips the potato chips in the oil that transforms heat into hottie.
Ares dusts them with ghost-stunned ashes of blood tempera.
He puts them in a bowl made of warlord skulls
and puts the bowl on his coffee table.
On his couch, Aphrodite reclines in self-absorbed narcissism.
Ares picks up one of the chips and places it between her pillowy dark lips.
The tip of Aphrodite’s tongue burns.
Her blackness blushes in red patina.
