Four Fried Vegetables

As she sat by the stove,
Eggplant plugged her purple nose;
Through pursed lips she proceeded to engage
Onion in a lengthy and
Increasingly insensitive
Berating, battering his rings with rage.
Onion countered not at all,
He only offered in a small
Pathetic voice, “My skin just keeps me dry.”
Eggplant then, in utter shame,
Unplugged her nose, and without notice
Broke down into pieces and she cried.

Zucchini rued the day
He let his pithy reputation play
And pander to the tastes of the bourgeoisie.
He felt dirty and emasculated,
Macerating in his envy,
He grew greener as the days drew on.
Taking stock of the situation,
He planted with determination
Himself as deeply as he could afford.
Later he was found all shriveled,
Old and acrid, spouting drivel,
Sprouting spotted stems and out of his gourd.

Rutabaga scolds Zucchini’s
Flagrant self-promotion ,
Blaming his deception for his fate.
He contends that if Old Greeny’d
Really been as long and big
As he’d gone to such lengths to propagate,
He wouldn’t be in such a pickle.
“Save,” he says, “the fickle
And the boisterous for compost heaps and feed.
As for me I’ll show all these
Tomatoes my rotundity and girth
And spawn a brand-new hybrid seed.”