On the faculty hiring committee, I march,
demanding they acknowledge me
and my virtues. I tell them I am decent.
I never thought about killing someone
except myself, even then I didn’t do it.
Despite myself & the myself I found
in everyone else, I kept living, growing up
to becoming the world’s most singular professor,
giving my only lecture: ‘How to Eat an Elephant’.
Sure, everyone knows one bite at a time. But
Committee, I’m here to tell you, nothing matters.
Trunks can be broiled to the consistency of salmon.
My ‘Elly Belly soft tacos’ are second to none.
Listen, members of the committee, I have been
the elephant, no, I mean I was in the room
when it almost happened. Now, that room
is the elephant in every room I enter. So, stop
asking me about my qualifications or why
I’m on the desk screaming. Tusk soups & broths
in a stock pot. Ears are great bacon substitutes.
Hire me now & give me money forever. I didn’t do it,
but I really wanted to. Please, don’t tell anyone,
but the secret is you never really finish the elephant.
So many rooms have made a meal out of me.
Winner 2023 MERCY Contest: Poetry
On Hamel’s poem, judge Maggie Smith writes, “I admire so many things about this poem, which speaks to self-mercy and self-compassion in ways both playful and devastating. I admire how this writer has transformed well-worn ideas and made them new here; the metaphor of the elephant in the room is interwoven with the familiar saying about how to eat an elephant, bringing us to the unforgettable last line: ‘There are so many rooms I’ve made a meal of.’ I gasped.”
Jordan Hamel is an Aotearoa New Zealand writer and performer. He has an MFA from the University of Michigan. His debut poetry collection Everyone is Everyone Except You, was published in New Zealand by Dead Bird Books in 2022 by Broken Sleep in the UK in 2024. He is the winner of the 2023 Sonora Review Poetry Competition, and the 2023 New Writers UK Poetry Prize. He was the runner-up in the 2023 American Literary Review Poetry Contest and a finalist for the 2024 BOMB Poetry Contest. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY, Electric Literature, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, Gulf Coast and elsewhere.