NUTRITION
All you can eat
All you care to
so as not to seem like a challenge
All you can deliver from the dark
and confabulated night
O lysine arginine
O fats and carbohydrates
All you can imagine
that makes the constituents of brotherly
and sisterly love
that also makes cheeseburgers
that is never enough as long as
you believe
there are different oceans not one
You are this and inevitable
You are all the sad eyed children
above the 800 number
all the essential aminos
O guanine
We could be anywhere
be mice in Secaucus New Jersey
and still need them
the tables of daily requirements
the sparkling waters
the glass half missing the trace elements
All you can stand
the yard sale the bake sale half off
the condiments glistening
_____________
Allan Peterson
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Last October, at the hotel–spa in the English countryside where I work part-time, we hosted the U.S. under-16 girls’ national soccer team. One morning, one of the coaches came to me, genuinely impressed by the ingredients listed on the bottle of pineapple juice he had with his breakfast. “So few ingredients compared to the U.S.!” “That’s food regulations for you, sir,” I muttered back instinctively, before regretting it.
The craze, the free-for-all psychosis of opportunities, the limitless possibilities, the messianic advertising, the allegedly open doors, the fleeting attention we pay, all converging into the vacuum – no, the plain river of bullshit we are inoculated with – all perfectly depicted in these verses. Daily bread, dissipation: thankfully there are poems like this one to help us tell the husk from the grain.