Dan Shawn
universal acidmy father was a
veterinarian a lazy one at that and when I was born he simply stood by and watched as my mother circumcised me with a carrot peeler the trauma left its mark so to speak mom and dad split up when I was five she ran off with the butcher's wife he patented universal acid a liquid that no container can hold we don’t talk much these days and the earth is slowly dissolving Heirlooms
you once dreamed
of a melon and the boy who butchered it with a ballpoint pen as though he was carving out the back of the neck of the white man who killed his father long ago on the Nebraska prairie but now those melons sit neatly in a room under the glow of ultraviolet lamps aside the petri dishes and you watch contently as the whirring meters pump plasma into them and yes you can feel it inside an eyeball can be peeled you say but not like a grape and anyway melons should not be tampered with those small citadels of virtue wisdom and power much too much like us when we sleep plastic baby corn
parasitic
poached goats are not for petting zoos but that has never stopped them before and of course there’s cream in a little hollow place tucked so very deep inside them (almost like custard I’d wager) they know all about the lobster and how she prefers to lay her eggs in a tight cluster all grape-like on the underside of the algal frond where I dream that we too might someday find cool shelter from the plastic bits that rain down from the tortured sky the 3-D printers that spit out pink toes and little baby corn holders metamorhpic
she
came into my bedroom holding a fishhook and a plastic glove and in her calmest voice explained that yes it would have to come out that mass of shrimp pulled from deep within my ear bloody left me barren and a little giddy but there are times when i still feel it blue veins tail flapping scent of algae salt my back sprouts a fin and the wound heals End of the Millennium:
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Mistakes
my mother
always said consume only the most digestible of oils and not the ones that congeal or cake up in the back of the throat or go clump clump as they descend but old habits die hard kinda like that thick pulvinus at the base of the oak leaf indeed one must be careful not to gag on its cellulosic rigor and yet foolishly i still deposit my leftover coffee grinds in the kitchen sink a bad move but apparently not an uncommon one said the plumber who tried to console me “people are forever doing things they later come to regret” Pickles
There’s a road sign that
one sometimes passes on the country roads of Quebec a child lying still on his side next to the road And the words read “This child could be your own” though of course they are written in French But you’d rather add brine to an overabundance of peas peppers and zucchinis stuff them safely away in a dark spot in the kitchen cabinet in a mason jar and wait for the lactic acid tang to bring out the pickle These pickles are living things you know and you can almost taste them with their garlic and dill But instead you think about snake urine and how it might smell The child will be fine you say He’ll grow up to be an insurance broker Get a divorce at 43 and when he’s eighty-four his toes will be like gherkins his nails infected with fungus and he’ll remember that day when he played dead. rust
when i was a boy
we’d climb the suspension bridges hoist ourselves up to the cables and grab on gloves always helped we'd grasp at the cold metal look down at the roadbed the icy water 300 feet below and never think about falling or maybe it would be the boom of a construction crane suspended above the top of a sixty story skyscraper hawks diving past our ears but now i only watch as the bacon grease congeals and wonder about its lustrous sheen as it forms a plug that you can swallow if you like and think how did I get to be so old? cause and effect
i threw a battery
into the fire and it exploded i ate too many prunes and my intestines hung down like a garden hose the dog knocked over the Christmas tree and the living room went up in flames i miscalculated and sent a staple through my thumb he pressed the button and the missile began its neat parabolic arc just as it was always meant to Space Food
i’m the guy
who labours late into the night to invent the synthetic meat you know the kind that grows on Petri dishes Big Science has this quest to replace the cow and pig with cells that crawl about like grains of rice on agar we'll herd them like pink worms and train them not to invade your liver don't forget to wash your hands it smells “down there"
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roots
a kidney bean
once became lodged deep inside my ear canal and i don’t think i need to remind you how a sweet polyp like that will sprout roots among the white axons grow throughout the squid and drink in salvation from the brainpan god knows i’ve tried what i can even turned to the purgative artillery strong medicine for sure but my throat muscles only strained and expelled a bulky stool so gassy and when the shaman sat atop me with his covey of broken clam shells scraped the flesh from back of my neck wouldn’t you know it the beast only sneered from the hole and spat so i guess i’m resigned now to co-exist with my friend and no as you’ve gathered it’s not a symbiosis but i’ll get by a second chanceif they were to
strap me down upon the concrete bed aside the polished steel of the Dairy Queen machine modified just for me with the carnival calliope and that special polyethylene hose the "new car smell" threaded with such care from the spigot to my gullet would i bear it well? would i fight back when they threw the switch and the warm slop began to flow? i’ve heard it said they sometimes fill these machines with medical waste but this tastes different today oh sure i might struggle even as my abdomen distends my fibres unravel the tar seeps out from me and wets my spine i might risk everything anything for a second chance i might but then again I haven’t before so why start now? take out
that thug
in the subway eating his shredded pork out of a cardboard box with a white plastic spoon and you on your way to the hospital you should have known not to carry your prostate out in the open like that it slipped from its greasy paper wrapping and tumbled out little giblet and he would have barely noticed as he bit into it had it not been for the spurting buttery decay Potato
Oh, Lord,
why be there jelly between our toes so sebaceous and scaly? why these flakes that pour from our scalps enough to bake a dinner roll with? why can we not be constructed from gleaming steel and chrome? enamel paint on the souls of our feet and if we are so perfect made in thine image why these middle age gases like moldy potatoes rising from the sheets? not to mention the pasty tartar between our teeth white manure? Believe me I've tried hard not to ask these questions But the skull meat (with its pleasing and nutty aroma) always seems to win out.
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