"Bananas."
"Yellow, bright, always seemingly sunlit, and shapely.
And even though there are age spots and bruises,
brown, freckled, striated, remind us
of the hands of those always beautiful once-young women, who
fillet their fish with the slow dignity
of the eternally beheld.
Even so, the banana can be seen as anything but a common prop
in its single indefatigable aspiration, which is its arc.
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHS]
If you remember the Nixon at [INAUDIBLE]----
I got to tell this joke.
The Nixon [INAUDIBLE] right?
I saw you on TV the other night.
They said, why did you vote in this election?
You said, I'm afraid of the death of capitalism,
or of democracy?
Something like that.
Anyway.
[LAUGHS]
Peyronie's disease, you know what that is?
A man can get that from calcification
in their penis, which makes it tilted a little bit.
And other things happen with it.
But this is just another way of talking about a banana.
[LAUGHS]
"Phallic, chronically, her [INAUDIBLE],, children
use it as a penis puppet, tucked between the legs,
thrust forward in imitation of their elders, though bowed,
can't droop or sag.
The pulpy flesh tastes unlike most anything but pretty good.
After the milk, among the first things tasted, woody, sweet,
the toothless lover, to sit across the table from Great
Aunt So-and-So and watch her strip it with arthritic twists,
and take the first chomp with her lips, then pause, then gum
the morsel, smile, unable for blessed moments to speak,
gives the family pleasure.
[LAUGHS]
You can feel it absentmindedly, while thinking
of something else, your newest big idea,
your latest adoration of someone else's spouse,
and maintain possession of perspective.
Skin, useless for anything but practical jokes.
Though, have you ever seen an actual person actually
slip for a moment, horizontal on the precarious cushion of air,
then fall flat on his back?
Smooth enough, I knew a woman who tried it as a dildo.
Put it anywhere, kitchen counter, coffee table,
as a still life among the pears and apples, those candidates
for inspiration.
And tiny winged things that were not there
a moment ago will suddenly blink into visibility
in a burlesque of flight, clumsy as drunks,
then fall onto the banana, bounce, fall back.
Tuck so closely on the trunk, they look endearingly familiar,
like bees, like bats, nursing at the mother of all of us."