Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Charles Harper Webb’s "Meal Not Eaten" is a haunting meditation on lost possibilities, unfulfilled desires, and the lingering presence of a past that never materialized. The poem explores the way memory, regret, and fantasy intertwine, constructing a moment that, despite never having happened, exerts a powerful pull on the speaker’s consciousness. Through evocative imagery, sensual details, and a gradual unraveling of time, Webb captures the deep ache of what might have been.

The poem begins with an overheard phrase: “Somewhere there’s an uneaten Chinese dinner with our name on it.” This opening immediately introduces absence, framing the poem as a meditation on something lost or left behind. The idea of an uneaten meal serves as a metaphor for a life unlived, a relationship that never fully materialized. The food is still there—intact, waiting, untouched—suggesting that the memory, too, remains preserved, hovering just out of reach.

As the speaker describes the meal, the imagery takes on an almost mythical quality. The "wonton soup drifts in warm fog just out of reach," evoking something tantalizing but unattainable. The description of “dragons circle the bowl” reinforces this sense of guarded distance, transforming the simple image of a soup bowl into a symbolic threshold. Even the shrimp, described as “a dead monster-from-the-deep,” seems both foreign and out of place, emphasizing the disconnect between what is imagined and what is real.

The meal continues to unfold with lush, sensory detail: “Steam wisps off the twice-cooked pork and chopped bok choy. The Emperor’s Chicken is here too: sliced peppers, red and green; black mushroom-gongs; white meat glistening in glaze.” The precision of these descriptions immerses the reader in the scene, making the meal feel tangible, despite its ephemeral nature. Yet, the intensity of the details also serves to underscore its unreality—this is not a memory being recalled, but a moment being imagined, one the speaker constructs out of longing.

The poem then shifts into intimacy: “We feed each other between kisses, screened by our red leather booth.” This moment of tenderness, hidden from the outside world, represents a lost connection, a love that was never fully realized. The restaurant setting, with its dim lighting and quiet elegance, becomes a space of romance and secrecy, a refuge from whatever external circumstances kept this relationship from coming to fruition.

However, the unreality of the scene begins to break through. The waiters are “so unobtrusive it’s as if platters fly solo through the air.” This near-magical description enhances the dreamlike quality of the moment—everything is too perfect, too seamless, as though it exists only in imagination. The final dish, “orange-halves offered in their bowls of pebbled skin,” continues this pattern, symbolizing something both beautiful and unfinished, much like the love the speaker longs for.

The turning point of the poem arrives with the introduction of fortune cookies: “Fortune cookies’ brittle purses enfold futures that, like this past, never occurred.” This line collapses time, blending past and future into a single unrealized possibility. The fortunes—normally meant to predict what is to come—are instead linked to something that never was. The paradoxical phrase “futures that… never occurred” reinforces the idea that the speaker is not just mourning a lost love but an entire alternate life that could have been.

The final stanza delivers the poem’s emotional blow: “I didn’t pay the bill, open her door, or drive her to my house, where we never made love in this bed where I lie now, in which I can almost touch her, asleep beside me as my wife, though she is not, and hasn’t been for a long time.” This unraveling of negatives—each action described in terms of its absence—solidifies the sense of longing. The speaker did not take these steps, did not complete this night, did not end up with this woman. Yet, she remains present in his mind, so much so that he can “almost touch her.”

The devastating conclusion—that she is not his wife and hasn’t been for a long time—reveals that the entire recollection has been not just a memory but a phantom, a persistent longing that continues to haunt the speaker even in the present. The imagined meal, the romantic evening, the love that never fully materialized—these things exist more vividly in his mind than the reality of his current solitude.

"Meal Not Eaten" is a poignant exploration of nostalgia, missed opportunities, and the enduring presence of the past. Webb’s masterful use of sensory imagery and shifting time constructs a dreamlike world where reality and fantasy blur. The uneaten meal becomes a symbol of all that was left unfinished, while the final revelation—that the imagined lover is long gone—turns the poem into an elegy for a love that never fully existed. In the end, the poem lingers in that space between what was, what could have been, and what will always remain just out of reach.

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