Friends, sharing a smile of conspiratorial knowledge,

Had gathered round me at Table.

“And care you not for this saucy dish

Of which you are eagerly ingesting?”

This query, asked in eagerness,

Through mouths restraining rising laughter, 

And encircling bodies, hunched and forward pressing,

Left me without doubts: 

They had fed me eggplant, eggplant disguised.

And I, placing down the utensil of the moment, 

Was unwell.

 

My Aunt raised me and cooked eggplant.

She loved eggplant -

(This widely cultivated herb, this ally of potato.)

- and cooked it weekly in unvarying manner:

On a deep-black frying pan purchased at the height of the Depression.

Positioned in the pan’s center atop the most minimal gas flame,

The tumorous mass would sit from morn to dusk,

Its purplish flesh stretching thin as its internal gases ought escape. 

And long before it exploded, revealing its moist dark leprous flesh,

It filled all our apartment with its dying breath,

The stink of a tortured entity. 

A stink of blackening purple,

Permeating every pore, animate and inanimate,

Assaulting the nose and the Spirit in progressive waves,

Promising garbage, Hell and ennui.

 

And to my fun-loving friends,

Who knowing of my disinclination,

Reveled in their successful mission,

I attached not a little of this historical stink.

 

Until the antidotal arrival of coffee and desert.

 

                                                                               

                                                                                   -  Jeffrey Eisenmesser, 1983