Dark Humor & Smarts in the Same Poem
I love a good funny poem, but it can’t just be funny; it has to be well-written. Humor for humor’s sake usually doesn’t quite work in a poem.
Like the love poem I featured last month, a dark humor poem needs detail—images you can see, taste, feel or smell and just-right metaphors or similes that make you laugh or say “oh yes.” I also prefer a narrative or thread that pulls me through the poem, and I like a poem to mean more than just its humorous elements.
Here’s a dark humor poem that succeeds in all these ways. It’s also a good example of how a poet can successfully use nostalgia or childhood memories to add humor and meaning without stepping into sticky sentimentality. You can also hear Rupert Fike read this poem here.
Bacon Grease
We used it every day, never got sick—
a scooped glob into the iron skillet
for fried grits, a grilled cheese, anything really,
its jar on the stove a vertical Rothko,
top creamy layers melding first
to ochres then a burnt speckled brown,
the mysterious pre-Cambrian band
we never got to since there was always
a new pour-off from each morning’s bacon,
a father’s job, two hands on the handle,
two tendons rising off his forearm,
today’s hot fat dissolving yesterday’s
but not for long. By lunch the bubbling
had reverted to its stasis of gel,
an arterial caution we never heeded
because this was my great aunt’s kitchen,
under her protection, this was the place
where things were kept as they always were.
And once the pan was hot, the grease crackling,
raw chicken was touched with hands that then touched
whatever they wanted – fridge door handles,
mouths, knives in flaking lead-paint drawers.
Under the sink an open rat poison box,
its skull and crossbones so very normal.
Rare pork chops for dinner, thermometers
broken to retrieve the toy of quicksilver,
mercury rolled from one child’s palm to the next.
Smoke trails from both parents’ Camels at dinner,
summer’s rotating fan always cageless,
its cord frayed at the overloaded plug,
pennies in the fuse box, metal garbage can
bottoms writhing with afternoon maggots,
my great aunt drawing the line at that one,
prescribing a pour of bleach then hot water.
That was my job – kill all those baby flies.
—Rupert Fike from Hello the House (Snake Nation Press, 2018)
Even before Rupert Fike and I became friends (through a poetry critique group), I admired his work because it’s so dang intelligent and well-crafted, often combining humor with a look back to a past that wasn’t always glamorous. When he uses self-deprecating humor or calls himself out on things of which he’s not so proud, his poems have an honesty that I admire and enjoy.
Dark Humor Poem: Taking a closer look
Word Choice
Fike strove for a blank verse rhythm in this poem, because, as he says, It’s a comfortable pace for the human voice and lungs. He pays pay attention to sounds and creating just the right image with an economy of syllables. Examples I especially like in stanza one are:
“a scooped glop”
“a new pour-off”
“stasis of gel”
“arterial caution” (the medical term deserving of its four syllables because it says so much)
“toy of quicksilver”
the skull and crossbones “so very normal” (I certainly can see that scary symbol on items under my mother’s sink).
Smart & Unexpected metaphor
The Rothko and the “pre-Cambrian band” comparisons are such a nice surprise in this domestic scene. In a shorthand way, along with color descriptions, they help us to really see this jar.
The Detailed List in Stanza 2
After immediately moving away from the bacon grease, he lists a dozen or so dangerous things. I like the fact that he pushed the list like this. Another poet may have included just a few items (sometimes poetry “wisdom” says use only a list of three), but Fike builds humor with the exaggerated length of the list. Because truth is better than fiction, he doesn’t have to make this stuff up. These dangers really were common in the world some of us grew up in. (I’m guessing younger folks can appreciate the humor and story of this poem too). I also end up asking myself, Are we too paranoid today in our everyday lives where it seems each day we learn of a new danger that we thought nothing of yesterday?
Further Reading
Hello the House, poet David Kirby (also known for his humorous, intelligent poems) wrote, “It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book as enjoyable as this one. It took me forever to finish because Fike’s poems made me want to sneak off and write my own.” The book won the publisher’s contest and was also selected as a “Book All Georgians Should Read, 2018″ by the Georgia Center for the Book.
Your Turn: A Dark Humor Poem
Have you written a dark humor poem or have you read one lately that especially worked for you? Please link to it or post it in the comments.
(Note, if you plan on submitting your unpublished poem to a journal, please be advised it will be considered previously published if you post it here. Publications like Every Day Poems, however, gladly welcome previously published work! A good poem is a good poem, after all. Worthy of being experienced again.)
Photo by Nicholas Lundqvist, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Karen Paul Holmes, 2022 Tweetspeak Poet Laura and author of No Such Thing as Distance. Rupert Fike poem used with permission.
In her former life, Karen was VP-Communications at a global financial services corporation, and she now works as a freelance business writer and consultant. Her ghost-written articles have appeared in many industry publications under executive bylines.
- Poet Laura: Passing on the Laura-ship - October 6, 2022
- Poet Laura: Telling Your Story Through Another’s Eyes - September 8, 2022
- Poet Laura: Dark Humor & Smarts in the Same Poem - August 11, 2022
L.L. Barkat says
Nailed
with a nod to Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s ironic poem “Other Mothers”
Other girls
were painting their
nails. Pink, red,
or the ever-glamorous
understated
French tip.
How I longed
for a dip into
that kind of girlhood,
with the Madewell jeans
to match—and, oh,
that Farrah Fawcett hair!
blown dry and frosted
to a sweet blonde perfection.
I was out on the porch
by the deer-hanging tree,
trying not to look, trying
the lock—my mother
figuring our chances
at the window (always
a good second try when
the keys or the door knobs
went missing).
He had perfect aim.
One nail, at a perfect angle,
at each unpainted
wooden frame.
No getting in,
after going
out.
So it was true,
what he said almost nightly
over venison,
and I shut my ears to:
I’d be nailed
before my girlhood
was through.
L.L. Barkat says
So my daughter and I have been discussing this poem I wrote (and why it just doesn’t get to the amusing place that Angela’s does, despite being equally dark)…
and we’ve decided that Angela is a genius. 🙂
It’s really, really hard to discuss deprivation, a difficult life (and forget about your parents!) in a way that brings the odd amusement of it upwards.
Your note about exaggeration, Karen, um, nails it. 😉 That’s definitely a technique I didn’t employ—and I’m not sure how I could have, given the singularity of those nails at each and every window of our house. I might try to rewrite this scene several times to see if I can achieve some kind of amusement that I didn’t achieve here. (Sara noted that the funny sounds in my poem actually may have heightened the horror, and I agree. Kind of like how a funny doll when it stands up and walks in a horror movie makes us that much more afraid of the scene.)
Big praise to your poet friend, who managed good humor in the otherwise not-so-easy scenes of the poem.
Karen Paul Holmes says
Laura, I think you’ve included charming, relatable (for many of us) details in the first 2 stanzas. Then with “deer-hanging” tree, you make an effective the turn to the dark. To me, it doesn’t seem like this wants to be a dark-humor poem but a poem of coming of age and vulnerability. My very humble advice is to leave it be. Then, if you want to explore humor, start a different poem on the same subject, maybe with exaggeration. I’d like to know more about the father, for example, if that’s an area you care to explore. Or the mother. Or what your friends thought back then. Or maybe it’s looking back with an adult’s point of view.
Thank you for sharing your poem and your doubts about it. I certainly have doubts about my poems, and isn’t that a common insecurity so many poets have? It’s always interesting (and usually successful) when we start out to write one poem, and it turns out to be a very different poem. In your case, you were inspired by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell’s poem, but your poem decided to be your poem with the tone your poem wanted to take on. Cheers to you for letting it go in its own direction.