Mussels Address the Home Cook & Farmer’s Market Tomato
Mussels Address the Home Cook
Dear cruel idiot, you force us to laugh.
In steam, we unzip. Our hearts are our tongues.
Before plunged into heat, we wanted to leave
our shore of ice, the pink flesh shining next
to us under cold lights like an opal,
the slick, wet skin chilling to silver
nearby. Something salted and ancient had stilled
in us. We held it like a secret. We whispered
not even to the lobsters roaming
in murky water pressing rubber bands
against the glass. With hunger we watched you
pick the wine, hefting white after white.
How could we not realize you were choosing
the very instrument of our undoing?
Farmer’s Market Tomato
My canvas tote bag leads a trail of blood.
My hands weigh shape after shape, searching
for the softening heart, the sucking pulp
of it that will take my finger deep
past the skin into the chambers
that keep dozens of purposeless seeds
suspended in their gel like frogs’ eyes.
They see the insides of the universe,
its red expansion from heat to the edges
of what could possibly be known until
I find it and offer it to the knife
on the counter, the black iron pan.
I christen it with garlic and oil, and eat
the overripe flesh as if it’s my flesh.
Anne Menasché grew up in New York's Hudson Valley and now lives in Washington, D.C. Her poetry has previously appeared in Town Creek Poetry and Frontier Poetry.