I
Louis would have felt awfully awkward at dinner with my family. Mom would have put spaghetti on the table--the kind with the big chunks of stewed tomatoes in the sauce--and his grin would have gone away. His mouth would no longer be like an ear of corn with big, juicy white kernels, but pursed lips like a pert lemon.
Maybe he would have liked mom's pork chops and apple sauce better. But if spaghetti was what we were having, then he better eat it. And on top of all that he'd have to make small talk with my dad, and try not to smack me across the table for staring at him--his big gold ring, his jaunty checked cap, cushy merino argyle socks so proudly ending in a pair of fine leather shoes.
"How nice, how nice..." he'd politely say in response to my dad's bad jokes, or my mom's attempts to make him eat more greasy garlic bread.
II
You are what you eat. As if teeth are corn kernels, and eyes are lemon leaves. I could eat myself outside in. Begin with my licorice hair and saffron eyelashes. Nibble off my potato chip fingernails and feast on my pudgy little vienna sausage fingers.
It's not an attractive fantasy. I'd rather my doorknobs become chocolate-covered almonds and my stairway transform into slabs of peanut brittle.
I'm such an American. A consumer. The world is more attractive as a place for me to gorge my appetites. Perhaps as an Iraqi suicide bomber, the idea of my lips as a sour lemon feels like a better idea. A bright, shiny fruit for God alone.
III
juicy fruit is gonna move ya
chews so soft it gets right through ya
juicy fruit the taste the taste the taste is gonna move ya
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