A bouquet of prickles and stings:
you weigh each thistled scale one
by one, drizzle with euphemisms:
creamy, nutty, fleshy, green.

What will happen when I've gifted
all my nettles away? What's left?
Steamed flower to scoop clean out.
Edible, pressure-cooked heart.

You're plucky and buttery,
ruthless in your mathematics
of extractions and subtractions.
A Fibonacci series of unpetaling.

(Can you squeeze a lemon on me?)

Seismic shifts, and things unhinge:

Relax with ice and slit the resistant
muscle, or steam open the shell.
Do not pry, and do not suck.
(The ice, the knife, the glove . . . )

Earthworms rise to the surface,
throb and bake in the fierce light.
Mole rats head-drum their portents.
Catfish thrash in a tumult of silt.

O harmonic tremor, o earthquake!

O, sweet giant!

O beautiful tsunami!

Garage Saling:

JM: [Bursting into kitchen, where I've just sat down to my morning coffee.] Okay! So you have fifteen minutes!

AH: What?

JM: You have fifteen minutes to get ready!

AH: Get ready for what?

JM: We going to garage sale! You have to hurry up!

AH: Um . . . I'm not going to be ready to go anywhere in fifteen minutes.

JM: You slow poke! Okay! You don't get to go! We leave you here by yourself!

AH: Okay.

JM: How many minutes you need?

AH: Forty-five. I need coffee.

JM: Forty-five? Hello, forty-five!

AH: Forty-five.

JM: You crazy! Okay! I going to set kitchen timer for forty-five minutes! When it go ching? You better pay attention! If you not ready, we going to go without you, and you going to get left behind!

AH: [Under breath.] What? And miss out on the Hoardy McHoardersons' field trip to the local garage sales?

JM: What you mumbling?

AH: Nothing!

JM: Don't talk back to your mother! And hurry up! Timer chooka-chooka-ing!

Wal-Mart:

JM: Don't leave your bag in cart!

AH: What? I'm not going anywhere!

JM: No! Somebody going to snitch you purse! You such stupid not pay attention!

AH: I'm standing right here.

JM: No! Don't be stupid! Somebody snitch! [Grabs shoulder strap to my messenger bag and wraps it around my forearm multiple times like a tourniquet.] There! You ave to keep wrap around arm so no snitch!!

At the Farmer's Market:

JM: What's that beeping sound again? Sound like peep-u!

AH: That's my cell phone.

JM: Who calling you now?

AH: Nobody's calling me. I have a text message.

JM: Whaaa? Sex-u message?

AH: Text message.

JM: Sex-u message? Who keep sending you sex-u message?

AH: Lots of people are sending me sex-u messages. I'm very popular.

JM: They must be nuts! Must be stalker!

AH: Pretty much.

JM: Oh, look! Watermelon!

AH: They're having a watermelon demonstration.

JM: Hey! Let's play trick on your father. Let's get a yellow watermelon and we pretend it's a red watermelon and we don't tell him. He going to be so shock when cut it!!! Hee!

AH: Hee! Okay. Yeah, let's do that.