It was one thing to be misunderstood
accused of poisoning aristocrats
who ate the acidic flesh off pewter plates,
part nightshade, part mandrake, called “golden apple”
called “love apple—”
a source of poisonous temptation—O aphrodisiac—
the whole plant of ranke and stinking savour
considered deadly as a rattlesnake if by chance
The Green Tomato Worm an object of much terror
with its curved horn-like thorn
crawled upon my fruit—
but, O beloveds—Black Prince, Big Rainbow, German Johnson,
Brandywine, Three Sisters, San Marzano,
Green Zebra, Bonny Best, Black Krim, Oxheart Pink
how dare they reduce our brethren to green, hard, tasteless, juiceless
severed too early from the vine
supermarket tomatoes dimples, splotches, dark spots, gnarls
engineered out— let us revel in our dirt our imperfections
let us ooze seeds and be sopped up by hunks of bread
while the humans shop
under fluorescent suns of their own making.
Notes: “of ranke and stinking savour” – from The Herball by John Gerard, 1597
“an object of much terror” – from The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery by Andrew F. Smith, University of South Florida Press, October 1, 1994
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Cindy Veach is the author of Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press, forthcoming), Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist, and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read.’ Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review and Poet Lore among others. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Prize and Samuel Allen Washington Prize.
