Cauliflower Dis Track—Terry Trowbridge

Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, Gray Sparrow, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, Fresh Words, Mathematical Intelligencer, Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Beatnik Cowboy, PPP, Synchronized Chaos, New Verse News, Five Fleas, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.

Cauliflower Dis Track

I post no odes to cauliflower,

but explode odium for the despised flower,

the colourless petal depressed unfloral fluff flower,

the unspiced flower tasteless mush flower

tactlessly attached to recipes requiring fiber flower 

I explore the inglorious travesties of the albino bronchi flower.

My poems decry across the curtains of my isolation,

implicating cauliflower

in war crimes and milkshake duck

along with other flower failures my typescript

has a purpose to malign, stain, with charcoal dusty mold

that resembles soot on the supposedly pure white cauliflower

gone to rot: I smutch thee flower, ashen must across thee flower,

my words enjamb the roots beneath my rhyming foot

Foul when unbuttered, uncooked, raw like the raw nose

in an acrid chemical spill impossible to hide

with municipal dumpsite ranch dip flower.

Conflating nutrition with indigestible fibers as though

pink insulation is flower, fireless asbestos is flower,

irony blossoming at disappointment is flower,

the hate flow through you flower

Whitey’s codpiece bulbous with HPV, steamed, served flaccid.

My poems defame cauliflower,

bear witness to the bare minimum of cuisine and the failure to achieve it,

here are my poems detestable exams of multiple choice:

choose a weapon, take ten paces, and clobber flower