John Grochalski writes

as two boys kick a ripe tomato

down the garbage-strewn sidewalk

i wonder about what the hunger rates

in the united states of america are

surely, they’re pretty high

or the food bank would’ve stopped sending me mail

i feel shame over the uneaten salad

sitting there waiting to be thrown out

in my work refrigerator

the victim of two spontaneous slices of pizza

the thumbed nose at food i’m supposed to eat at forty-five

i stop to consider

which fruit and vegetable stand

those boys got the tomato from

which merchant lost at capitalism today

or decided to turn sustenance into sport

to appease two restless boys

i think maybe

i should be the adult here

in this scenario

pull the boys away from their fun

to tell them all about starving kids

in china

in ethiopia

in parts of brooklyn they’ll never see

tell them

back in my days we kicked real balls

but that would seem judgmental of me

or at the very least racist

and maybe somewhat xenophobic

and there’s enough of that

going around here these days

plus, you never know

whom you’re going to offend

what poverty of pocket or mind

that lead to kicking a tomato for sport

also there’s still the issue

of my own uneaten salad

all of the uneaten salads that i’ve spurned

then later scraped away in silent shame

left to rot away

in a mound of garbage

shipped somewhere upstate

guilts that have lasted me decades

culinary hypocrisies blasting like fireworks

over a glittering trash heap

on the fourth of july.

 

Cornucopia of Emptiness --  Chati Coronel