Biker Jim's inspires a poem: We never sausage a thing!

Mark Manger

Hot dog! It's "Biker Jim" Pettinger.

Paul Handley was so inspired by the success of Jim Pettinger -- and by his Biker Jim's dogs -- that he wrote a poem, "which I sent him and was published in Puffin Circus, as was an abbreviated version on-line in Every Day Poets," Handley reports. "Jim was good enough to read it and provide feedback. He was a good sport."

And here's that poem:

BON VIVANT

Hot dogs are cool,
but not as cool as this
reindeer dog I'm gnawing
from Biker Jim's roach coach
of exotic meats. Wild boar,
German veal, jalapeno elk.

The pickups must be bizarre,
a ranch with boars on spits
getting carved like lamb gyro,
fattening pens of calves,
close enough to bludgeon,
like the carnival game where
the rodent pops in and out
of holes to slug with a hammer.

Reading my daughter My Little
People Farm, I imagine dog dogs
would sell very well in certain
regions and the duck pond would
provide fill for a bun coated with
a l'orange. She says "oink, oink"
and looks at me to confirm.
Morels, I say. The pigs
find morels.