Eaters

1

i remember Japanese construction workers at a noodle bar

joking with the queer foreigner who talked like a child

and didn’t get what word they were trying to teach

when all they wanted to hear was an audible slurp

2

I don’t eat anything without a face she said

however blank or fanciful it must have personality

like a tomato that bites back she said

and hugged herself tighter

a black leather coat draped over her bones

3

they say if you eat chanterelles in the dark of the moon

you gain the power to hear what the worms are whispering

they say if you drink ginseng tea you’ll have very expensive piss

they say if you’re starving you can eat the inner bark of trees

but i feed the serpent in my gut nothing but eggs

4

i’ll have the usual

delectable products of animal misery

comfort food isn’t it

Goya’s two old people eating soup at the Prado

a year after the death of the butcher of Guernica

and 12-year-old me shocked at the potential horror in something so primordial

learning how wholly consumption can consume us