O, Meal Worm!

A meal worm eats me like a gourd of flesh,

     this slimy beast I dread; two weeks or more

until my heart's (that once was young and fresh) 

     a hole that brims with the plaque of its gore.

Soft-bodied, legless, and writhing, this meal worm,

     like yeast that leavens a raw loaf of baked bread,

or phage that necrotizes like a germ,

     consumes its host until it's thoroughly fed.

Elongated and portly, like a porcine

     (a milky-white and ravening parasite!)

with the over-sized appetite of a swine,

     you threaten me with a sick, terminal blight. 

But if I were the brave one, O meal worm,

I'd make a meal of you and watch you squirm!

By Ngoc Nguyen

From: United States