What is it about chocolate that inspires such poetry? Here’s one by Erin Keane about the bad kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
What they didn’t tell us, after we unwrapped
the lucky bar, was our place in the plot: stupid,
fat, competitive, spoiled—at a madman’s whim.
We were to make the blond kid look good
by comparison—he only had to top our
dubious virtue. Shooting fish in a stockpot!
There’s a special place in Hell reserved for
people who tempt small children with rivers
of chocolate and drown them while they drink.
Olympic cruelty—I am waiting for the irony
to stop: let us, the greedy brats, gather our spoils
to our chests. Let there be no correction tonight.
Let the good kid kneel beside his crippled elders
and massage their gouty legs, forgetting to remind
us all of his sacrifice. Let him bless their bunions.
The lazy, the conniving, the slow—we’ve gathered
outside the factory gates. The sweet-tart rejects
have come home, Wonka. We would like our reward.
—Erin Keane, author of Death Defying Acts