by Marilyn Annucci

Whole Foods

are so much better than little bits, little chewed off

pieces of foods one might leave for a bird or a woman

without a home.  Not whole, as in lacking parts: broccoli

without heads, potatoes missing eyes.  Maimed foods.

Pork chops on their last legs.  Tomatoes with their skins

blown off. Bread crumbs.  The whole crumby world out

there, not in here.  Whole, as in what more could you ask

for: bright organic peppers in the jet of the spritzer.  Crisp

stalks of celery, fennel, white asparagus.  Complete, as in

all of us together, smiling, restored, fully realized as we reach

for that tiramisu.  Rich, as in not poor, not stuck with radiated

beef, milk, mutated chickens, as in not free, not free-range at all. 

-published as “The [Failed] Ghost Copy Writer: Whole Foods” in The American Poetry Journal (Number 8, 2008)