Poem Explication: The Food Police

The Food Police: Poem Explication While poetry as a genre often evades the approachability of prose, its task at the end of the day is the same: to relay a narrative of truth. One advantage poetry holds over prose, however, is its intrinsic ability—even obligation—to explore the complexity of that truth. In the case of my poem, The Food Police, I attempt to do exactly that, examining the ways in which our interpersonal relationships reflect and are affected by those we hold with food. By setting an emotionally volatile internal dialogue against the backdrop of an everyday scenario, I hope to expose the ways in which negative relationships with food can affect more than just one’s waistline. First and foremost, I set out to tell an honest

This was especially difficult given that, all in all, the poem is very one-sided in its narration. The clearest technique I used in an attempt to accomplish this was having the speaker repeat—or very nearly repeat—the opening line of her lunch fellow. While this gave the poem a certain amount of ‘physical’ symmetry, it also denotes an ironic similarity between the two characters. Not only does the speaker criticize the other girl’s statement as being unnecessary and deceitful, but she also takes it as a passive aggressive slight. Another way in which I attempted to showcase the irony of the piece was to place the speaker’s oxymoronic statements and observations side by side. Thereafter I divided the text’s paragraphs into sections that would further enforce the contrast between those specific statements. As the poem opens, the speaker states, “I’ve never seen her eat a salad, not that I would have noticed anyway because it doesn’t matter, and I am not the food police.” In the paragraph below, this pattern continues in her assertion, “I suppose she could mean a snack, but I won’t suppose because she is not a suspect, and I am not the food police.” This pattern breaks briefly with the narrator’s accusation that “she, she is the food police,” only being resolved after an extensive

Further supported by the secondary girl’s invitation, this highlights the fact of food as ‘an event’ in our lives. As an event, food is most commonly associated with the act of bringing people together. What I attempted to do in this poem, however, was convey the ways in which negative associations with food so quickly evolve into negative relationships with people, therefore pushing people apart and even into isolation. While certain, briefly mentioned details within the piece hint at this negative personal relationship with food—and therefore the isolation it has caused—I did my best not to dwell upon those sections. In particular, I left the statements of “twice measured [portions],” “unearned [portions] twice tasted in repentance,” and “now daily scale-based inspections,” un-extrapolated upon as to avoid writing a guide to unhealthy food relations and allowing a certain amount of humor to remain intact. Another more obvious way in which this poem qualifies as a “food poem” is its title. As we get older we obtain more and more freedom when it comes to what we eat, and that includes both contents as well as the amount. Unfortunately, adulthood also often brings with it feelings of self-consciousness and increasing