Ode to a Chipped Mug at Dawn By BR giga I sing the body caffeinated. Not the heroic body, no, the slouched kitchen body, hair misbehaving, arguing with daylight. O Cup, blunt oracle of porcelain, you squat on the counter like a dockworker waiting for the bell. You contain no prophecy, only heat. I lean into you as if you are the Atlantic in November, cold-hearted, corrective, and honest enough not to flatter. You smell like roasted soil, like the underside of ambition, like something dug up and set on fire for the sake of getting through Tuesday. I drink you black. Milk is mercy. Sugar is fiction. This is not a fairy tale. The first swallow scalds, a small necessary violence. The tongue protests. The spine straightens anyway. O America of unpaid invoices, of inboxes breeding overnight, of headlines shouting into tin cans, behold the citizen with his chipped mug and narrowing eyes. Nothing changes. The rent remains. The calendar does not apologize. Yet something inside the ribcage click...