inedible 

my friend says to me "you know the food you see in commercials isn't real?" we talk about food stylists & wonder if our ancestors could have imagined a whole profession around making delicious phallacies. my grandmother used to grow herbs in her windowsill. i remember her thin fingers pinching boats of basil. she would talk about her mother's tomatoes: amorphous but sweet. almost none of what i consume is picture-worthy. then i think that eating is a kind of anti-knowing. tongue & gums. only senses. photographs always unfurling in my blood. blueberry fields & sighing corn stalks. fingers holding steady a zucchini to cut into cubes. on tv there we watch ice cream made of potatoes. water droplets that have been delicately placed on a skirt of lettuce. we are hungry tonight & we watch burger advertisements. the buns rotate on their pedestals. smiling mouths. white teeth. a nuclear family laughing & i laugh too at the absurd distance between of what we say we want & what we really want.