Instructions to the cannibals

Of course, my eaters, you could

Swallow me whole.

But there are parts of me, frankly,

Worth savoring,

Worth tearing off or ripping out

For that special meal

You have been craving.

It would be wrong, for example,

To allow the heart to stew

Too long in the bile that fills

So much of me.

There are organs that would cook up

Into spicy Latino dishes

And mustn't be mixed

With my kosher New York meat.

Even the vegetarians among you

Will feast:

If you will harvest it,

There is corn warm from the sun

Inside me,

Sweet and patient as history.

Save my knees for a special occasion:

Their scars are not from kneeling

But from fighting.

Throw my eyes in the pot

With my feet,

For I have always

Followed my vision.

More knowledge will come

From eating my hands

(because they have touched others)

Than from the dark sweetbreads

Of my brains

(once they were frozen and will never taste

quite the same again).

You can suck more courage from my spine

Than from my fists.

Delicious, delicious, a million dreams

Await you:

Eat them raw.

I have shared them so little.

Somehow it would be wrong to cook them.

 

Watch out, though, for the totally undigestable

Forehead.

It thickened, toughened

From my constant running up

Against it.

And if you refuse to plant my penis

(it is a flower, you know)

Then eat it in daylight

Amidst dancing and drums.

Eat all of me, my cannibals,

Eat the plastic and the fear,

The fire and the marrow

-- the marrow that always knew

You were coming.

Bite me, chew me well:

I have stuck in throats before.

                                                -- New York, October 28, 1982