Negotiations

I made a pancake today,
and cut it up into
two four eight sixteen thirty-two little animals mostly squarish
who maybe would have roamed
somewhere with the deer and the antelope.
Desert-colored little animals with smooth warm hides.
But I fenced them in on my plate,
concentric seventies solemnity,
locked them up
behind the smooth weighty tines
of my fork.
Later
they will gallop circles in my belly.
Stampede behind my eyeballs.