July 2026 Poetry Contest Winner
Anecdote of Eggs
Erica Tolin
Anecdote of Eggs
After my husband left I couldn’t stop eating eggs. At first just scrambled, in the morning, like always but then in the afternoon too. Fluffy omelettes, tarty frittatas. Late evening I would eat eggs, poached on toast points, fried into bread holes, dripping gold yolks spilled onto Buffalo China plates I licked afterward. I created a dish I called “Runny Mess!” a miasma of eggs and potatoes plus any other ingredients available to be disastered. Soon there was no time for heat. I just cracked eggs, one by one, into a bowl then a cup then my mouth, gulping egg jelly oozing through laryngeal tissue knocked back in spasms, like shooting whiskey, like sword swallowing. Enough, I thought. I surrendered. Stopped with the whole raw egg-bong thing. Instead I just opened the carton and swallowed swallowed all those eggs shelled, whole, hard, uncracked I swallowed like a snake would swallow prostrate creature writhing coiling forcing life down its maw
Erica Tolin is a poet, actor, and REALTOR based in Pittsburgh PA. She has been a participant in the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and her work has been published in print and online. She lives in an old house with her kids and her cats.
This poem previously appeared in Cultural Daily online.
