(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 5, 2016)

When I was a child a relative told me
the English do not eat tomatoes.
And I cannot let go of the false idea,
the tomato-ness of America.
Large Red, Old Virginia,
the Mortgage Lifter—
these all sound gravely patriotic.
As does Martian or Mountain Princess,
like some Appalachian fruit.
Even the almost allegorical
Early Abe. But what about the purist,
the Romaist, if you will, the one-kind
of onion eater who won’t take artichokes
or okra, lives on peas and is a veritable
celery-heart, consumes eggplant only as a slur,
garlic as jewelry; potato is his credo.

Take the speckled small watermelon,
red with evaporating streaks of green.
The part of this and the part of that.
The half breed, the synthesis, the cauliflora
extraordinary. Full of halves. I know
quite a few people who would refuse it.