“Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing, and eating it?” –JSF
“I am going to write poem
about Jonathan Safran Foer,” he declared.
“I’m not going to like it,” she said,
then laughed in spite of herself, because
he’d made a reference to a part of JSF’s anatomy.
But she wasn’t actually laughing at that.
She had thought of something silly and domestic she had done earlier, like maybe she had picked up the wrong toothbrush or tried to use her flatiron before plugging it in.
But the Safran Foer poem did not amuse her,
how he started slowly at first,
putting French string beans up there,
but the limp ones tended to bend and break apart.
Then he got more bold,
experimenting at first with sugar snap peas then carrots,
before moving on to cucumbers.
Boldness grabbed hold, and he worked an entire zucchini in,
and clenching it, he eyed the summer squash, lustily.
“When I accepted my New York Public Library Young Lion, I had three turnips and a large leek secreted away,” JSF confessed. Then he added, “There on the steps beside Bryant Park, those leafy vestiges poked out and tickled my skin.”
But he never felt satisfied,
always left wanting more,
insatiable, hungry,
empty.