Peas

My love loves them,
the only thing she eats
that’s good for her.

For me they’re like eating
green chalk.

He, too, hated them,
so much
(even the best, “Leseur,”
in the silver can).
He’d eat, but couldn’t swallow,
even when she made him sit
at the dinner table
till he would.
I’d try to reach over
and spoon them
off his plate
when her stiff back was turned,
but she—spilled-milk-slapper— 
kept a weather eye.

So he’d sit for hours,
chipmunk cheeks pooched
with the green goo,
forbidden to leave.

That was my little brother— 
lost now— 
my mother—gone
too— 
and me:

all of our young lives
in a mouthful.


       
   
    
Elementary 


Monday they'd bring a quarter—I'd carry
another bag, creased and wet
from my fist, or box that was a tin
cartoon of leftovers.  Down a long
row I walked for milk, past steel
pans steaming real food.  Anything
gets old, perfect meatloaf, vine ripe
tomatoes--under desks they
harden, soften, exchange chemicals.
Some days I'd dump it all, even sandwiches 
my blond mother made in darkness, 
unopened into drums of pig slop and beg
hard rolls like Luke Butler,
who stank, had green clothes, free hot
lunches, and blackheads, volcanoes pricked
with pepper.  I still get sick of what
I make myself, and crave, not Antoine's
or Maxim's, but the dawn bacon of summer
camps, mess halls, the cafeterias of prisons,
mental institutions, homes for the old.
And what is heaven but another leftover?
Although I hope it's a sort of higher school,
one you walk to with both hands open.





a ham dinner
        i will not let thee go, except thou bless me.
                                                           —genesis: 32
it’s what we should bow our heads
and  imagine
she always said,

so we thought it a home remedy
passed down from mother
to mother,

but found out later
mom-mom made it up
on the spot, 

some first time, long ago,
to whisper in the ears
of giggling girls

to hush them up, 
maybe when the sermon that day
was the wrestling angel

touching jacob 
on the thigh.
whatever, 

it worked:
coca-cola glaze,
cross-hatched, clove-spiked,

the green bean casserole,
praline-topped, smashed 
and buttered yams, 

even mashed potatoes
drizzled with the thin, dark 
blood of red-eye gravy,

and then it was us, all 
glazed, and silent, and solemn
as if it really were

time to eat,
as if it were time
for grace.