Red pepper hummus, 
our bodies as book ends,
and the quest for the perfect hamburger.

Would you think to call me your bookend?
Sitting back to back with pages
between us. I can try to read
to you across the distance of novels
but the words would get lost
somewhere in the grumbling of
Mark Twain or wander lonely as
a cloud to be smothered in 
another index of Romantic poetry --
Are we going on a quest 
for hamburgers again?-- I don't remember
what hamburgers taste like 
but I have decided that to some
people hamburgers could be like books--
I know you claim not to be a poet
or an artist or a writer but
we all were be and will at some point--
We make these bodies into art
however we can and 
When art gets mixed up together we call
it bodies-- we call it 
touchcoffeedatelovemelovesay
thatIwasmorethanloveorsonnets
orwhateveryouweretryingtotellme
byorderingahamburgerkisskisskiss
lettucebedandfuckmelikearedonion
tomato-slice of a sonnet-- 
How is it?--I say
I eat words not sesame buns 
but you know what I mean-- I don't 
don't just mean food-- I mean
this art-- this body sandwich
between walls of books--
I mean I want to know 
if art is something made by
love or if love is something
we can come to call art--
and if mayonnaise could mean as
much in a mouth as a simile--
Have you loved me in roasted in red pepper
hummus or was it was always
at least 300 pages away?
Lend me your dust jacket
and pass the pita triangles--
So.
we walk the crooked back of 
the Village and write hamburgers 
in graffiti on the subway walls.
Only you and I knew what
they were supposed to be saying--
but that's gone now--
When I go
back the pictures
just look like menus items--
Do you ever feel like a menu item
for someone to love?
We haunt the MoMA with the smell
of french fries and ketchup--
keep napkins in our pockets to 
dab away the saunter of grease-- 
Come home to warm each other 
from bookends--
Do you like hummus? I say
and I mean 
Do you like me?
You can teach my how flip a burger
like a volta or enjambment
I'll read to you from The Bell Jar 
because I
once cheated on you with Sylvia 
Plath-- no we didn't have sex--
There's just something about her
words that I thought about loving 
more than bodies-- I felt her
art inside my art-- we ate
a poem together from a diner booth-
I guess loving me isn't very much fun.
We always had to sit back to
back anyway--parceled between
the mouths of dead poets
making me french fries and slicing
tomatoes thinly or jaunty in
awkward chunks--
I'm not asking you to read to
me but everyone who ever truly 
loved has at some point read to 
to me-- I guess it's what I 
do instead of of eating--
I'm sorry I shared hummus with
you-- I'm sorry there were candles 
and the books slouched on the shelf 
for a night-- I forgot
that a everyone's body has too many 
ways to write a poem and too many
ways to let itself be broken--
Descend from a book shelf--
To eat with me is something holy
I hope you understand-- I've forgotten
how to love myself and food and
I've been repulsed by hamburgers 
but never by you and hamburgers--
I learned that together
me and you were roasted red pepper hummus 
and soft
triangles of pita chips
and square tables-- 
Our bodies don't have the same
art as they used to and I don't need
them too-- Because I still
have book ends and I assume
you still have hamburgers
and we both can remember hummus.
I'm learning how to be less
of a picture on a menu and more
of poem in a mirror--
Sylvia Plath told me I have a 
mouth to eat the world--
and I laughed because 
I only want to eat a few
pages everyday of my own verse--
turn around and let the books
slouch for another body--  
Lite a candle on a square table--
make red onion--
slice tomatoes-- read 
to me-- read to me
read me-- mayonnaise or
metaphor.