Earthly Delights


The cauliflower he had carefully placed in his conch skull
seemed to be making inappropriate decisions lately:
the stacked gourds it had carefully selected
to function as vertebrae kept slipping out
and rolling down the sidewalk. The toes were all right;
the cherry tomatoes had been freshly picked that morning,
plump and taut with ripeness, but most of the fingers,
miniature chili peppers, red to match the toes,
were beginning to shrivel.

He wasn’t happy with his buttocks, either;
those white eggplants never seemed to get as large
as the purple ones. The frog in his throat
wouldn’t stay on its apple, and the roses in his cheeks
were slowly shedding their petals on the wind.
But his potatoes were all eyes. Staring
at Lettuce’s enormous melons,
he felt his hard green cucumber
ripen.


©2003 F.J. Bergmann

"Earthly Delights" appeared on Tattoo Highway #8

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