yellow-golden twigs
are trees, whose thousands
of tiny trees mirror
the insane logic of
the surreal –- the worlds
within the world,
growing on the world;
the velveteen sunshiny
corduroy of the
emaciated organic
broccoli
the bubbles of
the starving oatmeal —
bubbles rich, metallic,
breaking like dreams
all around one —
the oatmeal
shrivels up still in
its pots, pulls its
haunches in, congesting
its destiny, content
to huddle, to cook down
and congeal
as Bo Chu
my Korean friend
emerged from the subway
in Harvard Square
I caught him and asked
if he wanted to eat.
no, he’d eaten
in Boston, he muttered.
where? I demanded
La Crepe. What kind?
snail butter, he said,
and a large slow smile
spread over his mouth.
the still pebbles
of the puffed millet
and rice wafers
preserve their dignity
easily digestible
they yet manage
a ghostly still virginity
made palatable to humans
only by the addition
of sea salt to
the moon-patties
before – what? baking?
nebulae in the peanut butter –
store-ground, the miraculously yellow
foam of nut-goosh,
the swirls, the sweeps, the cajoles
of the moonspray of the froth –
the first peanut butter ever
to swirl up, out into space –
foam of peanut butter,
the jubilant rejoicing marsh
of mellow frogs, shouting,
glug, glug, — the mesh
of holes in the mess
the rainbow butterflies
that float off
the summer squash
might be made
by a child’s
soapy wand,
they’re blown
so fine
must one sacrifice the sight
for the sound? I had one apple,
now it’s a crunch in my mouth –
but much larger it seems, in there,
less forlorn
the yolk stands up bright
in the black omelet pan
and the white drifts and spirals
dreamily away