Imperfect Veg
Oct 28 2014


Pumpkins by the truckload
in corrugated bins, as big as dumpsters,
out front
where customers trundle by
wheeling loaded carts.

All summer, they have grown
on redolent soil
under soft warm sun.
Bursting with sufficient seed
to colonize the world
with tiny orange globes,
whose only purpose
is also to repose
in pastoral fields
growing large.

The only real food
in the grocery cart
will be carved, but never eaten.
The bizarre artistry

of 10 year olds,
digging eager hands
into slimy guts
delightedly screaming.

And in a week, will be left to rot
like all the pumpkins

someone bought.
Carted off, and dumped.
Or shattered and crushed
to orange goo
under passing cars,

marauding teens

purloining pumpkins.

I picked out the oddest,
an orphan pumpkin
whose homeliness seemed sweet.
A kindred spirit
I will not carve, or candle
but will turn into pies, and roasted seeds,
a dignified end
to the industrial harvest
of Hallowe'en.

After which

the supermarket will dump the discards,

the squashed and rejected
lop-sided, off-centred
discoloured and dented
imperfect veg.
Along with all

the good ones left,

in the early hours

of November 1^st.

Bulldozed into landfill,
where not a scintilla of sun
can penetrate
cold anaerobic earth.


This poem is mostly about waste, whipsawing the reader from a long golden summer -- and the hard work of farming -- to a quick and dirty end. I think the most telling bit could easily be missed: the irony that the "only real food in the ...cart" is for display, not eating.

With this in mind, I think Industrial Harvest would have been a very suitable title. But it sounds awfully serious, almost scolding, and would have missed the light-hearted word-play that makes the poem (I hope) more delightful than an earnest lecture. Imperfect Veg better captures that tone, while still alluding to this idea of waste: because where it appears in the body of the poem, I would hope that "the good ones… " was voiced with a note of irony.

There are lots of fun quirky lines and nice sentences (and since I'm so bad at narrative and dialogue, I'm all about the sentence). But one of my favourites is the contrast between "redolent soil/ under soft warm sun" with "cold anaerobic earth". To me, this depicts the virtuous circle of life interrupted by an unnatural end. I see segments of pumpkin all stacked-up and squished together, forever trapped in funereal darkness under dead compressed soil: unable even to decompose into new life. They could excavate a hundred years from now, and turn up perfectly preserved pumpkins.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I'm not nearly so virtuous as the narrator here. In my defence, I don't bother with the seasonal pumpkin; but if I did, I'm not nearly a good enough home-maker to either bake pies or roast seeds. I'd probably let it go to rot, as well.)