.................................
Absalom
.................................

The family butchered their grove of Ugandan mangoes
to keep the boy from hanging by the limbs.

That night they drank glasses of mangoade
with grated orange rinds and lemon.
They ate mango rice salad next to cold mango sauced meat,
mango pudding.
Much of it went uneaten.
The girls cubed the green fruits, preserved them
in oil with curry, turmeric, fenugreek,
garlic, hot red peppers.
The next day they took mangoes to their neighbors.

The boy died mysteriously, no suicide,
but no autopsy,
no trees more than five feet high.

They will not eat mangoes dried,
will only talk of him with lively juice on their lips.

 
.................................
Tasting Fetus
.................................

We learn to eat like this:
pungent cheese grated over plates
of cheap noodles, basil and butter.
We're pacified early by baths
of seasoned spaghetti.

The fetus by fifteen weeks
has taste buds mature
as an adult's. The amniotic
fluid smells strongly
of dinner's cumin and cloves.

The baby licks the uterine wall,
trampolines in fragrant
syrup, drinks, eventually, a liter
a day, sweetened by the meat
of black cherries.

.................................
Deanna Madsen Fogel
.................................

 
Copyright © Deanna Madsen Fogel
October 1998

...a letter to Agnieszka in this room by D. Sadres...
candy
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