Midnight Grocery

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 1997 by Snyder, Jennifer

Midnight Grocery

The woman in the store calls me sweety and honey, is unassuming and funny, her hair pulled on her head in midnight noodles.

There is awe in remembering the furious symphony of food, the celestial artichoke and sensual sprout.

Oh, discombobulation of the masses, I pass from bread to egg, from egg to beet, and in the freezer carcasses of pigs make small circles in the breeze, their feet were dunked in the holiest of waters, their fathers came from the oldest field.

The lips of the lamb are delicate and dumb, the lips of cows are lined with the foams of hunger.

I follow the word of the turnip, my soul is the shape of the pear, manna from heaven, manna from the gods, a little light, a little water.

Our daughters eat stale crumbs from the ground.

Wives go through with their mysteries and secrets, and for a moment I enter a great light.

When we sleep we sleep in the ancient pulp of corn. We begin as smoke and end as wheat.

Once I was a cloud, now I am a fist of blood.

Let us go into the quaking palm and the piano sound of the pear, and let us imagine the errors in meat and stay awhile and eat.

When the vendor comes selling careful petals we will die. He will tell us the secret of wild, infinite wheat.

I love the maker of meat, lister of fruits, the religious fig,

I love the tomato, its redness sticks to the tongue,

I love the scent of burning bread and heads of lettuce and the dull and incredible turnip,

I forgive the assaulter of cows, the stupid and the quiet,

I forgive the bringer of buildings, his mouth full of money, I will leave petals on his grave,

I love the eating and the remembering and the infernal hula, the fury and the passsion vine,

I love the pineapple, umbrella of pain.

The body ascends, between love and hunger.

The store is filled with the glances of beets, behind its windows is always light and a great shimmering, a spilling over.

If we ask for food the maker of turnips will rain for us.

It is right and just the body of god is blood and food.