13 Ways of Cooking up a Blackbird

A few years ago, I was forced to sit through a two hour seminar on Wallace Stevens's poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. It was two hours of eighteen year olds trying to find intelligent ways to say, "Whoa, that's deep." To preserve my sanity, I started parodying the poem...

I
Among twenty mashed potato mounds,
The only inedible thing
Was the eye of a blackbird.

II
I was of three minds
Like a pie
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the cuisinart.
It was a small part of the seventh course.

IV
A pie and its filling
Are one.
A pie and its filling and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The savor of the main dish
Or the savor of dessert,
The blackbird browning,
Or just after.

VI
Popsicles filled the deep freezer
With sugary ice.
The carcass of the blackbird
Lay there, plucked and plump.
The spoon
Dripped on the carcass
An indescribable sauce.

VII
O thin chefs of Kitchen,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Bakes brownly inside
Of the ovens about you?

VIII
I know tasty hors d'oeuvres
And buttered, succulent squashes;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew into mouths,
It marked the edge
Of one of many plates.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Roasting in a warm oven,
Even the bawds of cookery
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He began his cooking
In a glass dish.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his spice rack
For blackbirds.

XII
The oven is warming.
The blackbird must be browning.

XIII
It was baking all afternoon.
It was browning
And it was going to brown.
The blackbird sat
In the baking dish.