Tuesday, March 17, 2009

skit #66: eggplants forever

You did not finish everything on your plate. A puddle of uneaten aubergine takes a curiously distinct shape and winks a botanomantic wink. She, the aubergine, articulates the plight of suppertime plants through a series of vogued poses:

Forgo introductions. You remember me, you do, you do. You selected me -- me, the purplest, the firmest, from all the eggplants. You liberated me from that stagnant nunnery. The other ladies didn't even want to be eaten, just to be pretty. You'd think they wanted to be eggplants forever. Jealous, jealous. You slipped me into my chariot, a brown paper bag, whose confines left me victoriously deaf to their slander and slurs. Jealous nobodies.

We went to your apartment. I let you take me all
apart, boy. My night skin off, my pale flesh cleft, that routine. All splendid. So you cooked me, served me. But then nothing. You let me go cold, untouched. You poked me with a fork and didn't even taste the tine.

And don't act picky.
You look healthy enough. No scurvy, no beriberi, no goiter. I can only imagine the cornucopias you've shat. Okra and artichokes and fava beans and -- oh, how repulsively incriminating, I spy broccoli between your teeth. So come on, boy. You'll need me for a balanced diet. Just a nibble. Take in my vitamins. Take them all.

Sombre now, her gestures take on the grave tone of a potato. You do not know on what basis you sense this.

Oh, and you're very culpable, yes. You owe this to me. Buying all that produce week after week. You know where it comes from, you do. Agriculture, cultivars, GMO -- ptooie. Now all these seeds my momma gave me mean nothing. I want to be remembered, have children. Get me into your body, into your cells. Make me a part of you. You owe me, eat me up. Let me in.

Yes, yes. Absorb my sugars, simple and sweet. Leech those nutrients. Just make me a part of you. With me, ascend the subway stairs, go nowhere on the gymnasium treadmill, pedal, run, fornicate, frolic. With me, with me, mundane or not, anything. Just to feel what you feel. Anything outside of this eggplant feeling. To have toes and teeth if only for a day! Even when you flush me down, I will have had that day and you will still be fashioned from me. Yes, swallow me.

The first-course arugula urges you to dispose of the aubergine. Since your body hardly belongs to you, you spit her out. You start to trust his judge of character; She was manipulative and a little mad. Sedate, sated, you retire for the evening.

Other ghosts of forlorn vegetables swim in your kitchen, awaiting opportunities for incarnation.

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