Seed Catalogue to Farmstand

This one stores well

You could be eating cucumbers on Christmas

Germination is slow and sparse



This tastes more like a cucumber than a cucumber

You have thirty-seven minutes from maturity to rot



This plant is prolific

You will have more cucumbers than you will have meals

over the course of your entire lifetime

They taste like hot sulfur water



You will point to the round yellow ones and ask

‘What do you do with that?’

I will smile

while I think ‘It’s a cucumber,

What do you want to do with a cucumber?’



If I made a sign that says

‘Great in Salad’

You will pay double and buy twice as much



And maybe they will never leave your fridge

or they will be discarded garnish on the plates

at your next dinner party, a topic of conversation

Or maybe you will eat the cucumber



And maybe I will pay my bills

Or maybe I won’t

All that matters to me is that you

Eat the cucumber

So maybe I will just give it to you

to try

Or maybe I will slice it and hand the slice to you

and watch you push it through your lips,

Free of charge



Jesse Clark, Vernon NJ

This poem was written during a Milkweed poetry workshop where writers are challenged to write a poem in 15 minutes.