Potatoes
Unless they’ve been clandestinely launched whole
into orbit as a satellite welcome wagon
gunnysack toward alien good will,
unless I’ve been mispronouncing sputnik
all these years, the quartet of big reds
freshly forked from Dad’s garden—
stowaways in my carry-on luggage
above our heads—might be the highest
flying spuds since Kitty Hawk. I do not believe
in happenstance, so when the strapping
young man in the window seat
insists on Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(note allusion here to mashed potato scene)
after I’ve already warned him I’m a poet
running on no sleep—a threat
that deters him not one tater tot iota—
touché, I think, as I buckle myself
in for the, unbeknownst to me at the time, starchy ride
and fire politely right back at the guy, so
what is it you do? As deadpanned
as the metal-detector deputy in bouffant
when I cautioned her not to nuke back into humus
the tubers I’m sending through her microwave,
he proclaims, with a bit of sinister
unwhispered boast to his tone, I
am a potato breeder. It’s a good thing
I’m graced with greater control than you folks
listening to this true tale. I, at least, am able
to draw—with a dull molar, no less—
a Red Cross pint from my inside cheek, to restrain my spasmodic bladder, to counter,
without a single twitch
of upper lip or brow, without one Adam’s apple
bobble, Ahhh, so you breed...(long pause)
potatoes. Luckily, my celibate darlings, huddled
like the epitome of virgin innocence
in their brown paper sack, are out of earshot,
I think, until I hear, from above, a jumping bean raucous
guffaw over Fargo, en root, not route, to Great Falls,
Montana—thank God not that Sodom
and Gomorrah of spud-lust states,
Idaho. So this is how I learned every in and out
of the chipping business, and yes,
the skins, like livers, do absorb
pesticide and fertilizer residues, but not enough
to compel one to forfeit the roughage benefit,
unless the subcutaneous epidermic layer has turned
green and, therefore, toxic. Incidentally,
the scientific name, should you find yourselves
in future discussion with horticultural savants
is Solanum tuberosum. I drink 6 vodkas
on the rocks over Bismarck. You got your Yukon
Golds, your Fingerlings and Yellow Finns, your Chieftains,
your Chippewas, Kennebecs, Burbank Russets, Early
you name it—this young fella has come eye bud-
to-Ph.D.-eyebud with every creed, color, race,
model, make, nationality and post-mortem
transmogrification. Me? I’m French-and curly-
fried by the time we touch down
at midnight in Montana and I say buh-bye,
my little sweet potato pie, to the stewardess
who refuses to return my perfectly rhymed toodle-oo
adieu—I’m scalloped, twice-baked, platskied, jo jo’d,
au gratined, shoestringed, mashed, colcannoned, vichyssoised,
hashbrowned and having green potato skin
hallucinogen flashbacks and, worse,
forecasts, as suddenly every Samsonite suitcase,
every garment bag, every nylon backpack
and canvas duffel transmutates, right before
my protuberant eyes, into bulbous burlap sacks
on the baggage carousel, where I stand—
the world’s number one vegetable,
between Rod Serling and Stephen King—confused
and drooling, mesmerized by the big blue-
lettered logo stenciled to the front of every gunny:
Zarzyski’s Purple Mazurkas
We Put the P-O-E-T in
P O T A T O E S
Rock ‘N’ Rowel CDs are available from the Western Folklife Center (phone 775-738-7508, ext 2) and CD Baby.
© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
