As a child, reading of “...the convict’s last meal...”
I devised — I thought — menu impossible:
late season’s fruits, corn,
shellfish unavailable in months without R’s,
fresh fiddleheads —
all produce incompatible.
I’d beat the hangman!
But that was before air freight, farmed fish, freezers.
(How old I am!)
“No problem” they’d say now
and I, doomed, could forget ordering
what I really wouldn’t want last time
and just anesthetize myself with fillet mignon,
onions, mushrooms, bread, rough red wine.
168
December 6, '03
Rev. 11.07
About Ellen Peckham
Ellen Peckham has read, published and exhibited in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. She frequently uses both art forms in a single work, the text decorating and explicating and the image illuminating. Her archives of drafts, edits and art are collected at the Harry Ransom Center For The Humanities and a 7 minute visual biography, Parallel Vocabularies, is available on DVD and via her website.
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