You Want Fries or Cole Slaw With That? or The Lazy Hermaphrodite I am a pea rolled around in a pod, Shook up like parcheesi dice. The nervous bird that smashes the glass is not the monkey that pushes the button. I am play-doh meat grinder spaghetti, Blown chunks of alphabet soup. The letters arrange themselves in omens and portents. Chicken entrails and pasta can be molded into some kind of sentient life. Transmigrating souls with walkmans and soda cans; Turn the dial to open the forehead, Poke the left eye for a new window. I am a pineapple chunk suspended in jello, Dribbling out of an old man’s dentures. I can create entire worlds with scissors and paper. I am hurtling sperm bursting endless ovum. Come on and shuffle my cards; Topple over my dominoes. Truth is tempted out of my colon with sour milk, and that’s my own face on the back of the carton. Look—see? The jacket is reversible. I was put in the kiln a long time ago but I never harden. Love letters and writs of execution were stuffed under my lid. Come on and burst my piņata. Unwrap me and tell me how many licks it takes to get to the center. Can you imagine reading the same fucking book for two thousand years? Why wait for Halloween? Let’s eat the whole damn thing right now! David Aronson
If you've any comments on this poem, David Aronson would be pleased to hear from you.