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Improv 1, Week 9

Script

Folio 43

Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros
beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding
back it's red lips while anthers circle
the pistil's one hand: above them
six lines are written in chancery script
with lettere tagliate, letters cut
like the long lines of pasta our parents
cut on our plate, the work of two people
who never met. The two halves of
each letter--below and above-- are severed
or sewn together by inked chain
links like those that knot a fence or a stitch
that unravels the whole length of
a sentence if a stray thread
is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain
mail, chain saw-- or those paper
links that wrap themselves around
the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider
sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and
binding in silk as if to ravel and
unravel once felt the same.

----------------------------

Food

Foods were eaten
like the grossness our parents turned
into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table,
the alteration of rules
we didn’t know existed.
They never read this book to us
of foods—that must or never be eaten—and taboos:
don’t not eat the food we prepare for you
and never prepare your sister’s contacts with rubbing alcohol
which you also shouldn’t gargle
when you exaggeratedly chomp the last of your dinner
and puncture your tongue.
Wash your ears if you ever pierce your ears
but don’t you dare let us find out
you got them pierced or didn’t clean the crust away
yet tore the crust off the honey wheat bread
broke the crust off the Pop-tarts
tossed the parts away that other children
don’t have the pleasure to display pickiness towards.
Children in other countries are starving, I think,
you think then how will my eating this crap satiate them?

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