9: little americas

everywhere they built little americas because
as Anne said we don’t like much else

the Texan knew that to know food the eater must divide the plate into its parts.  It’s hard work.  On one side of the plate he piled the noodles and from this start point the plate became a world, an experiment.  Here the worms.  There the carrots.  Ants, still living but groggy, to the north. Spider legs piled like beard snip to the south.  Until it was all divided into a common federation of tastes.  The Texan then to pursue ate a portion of each (using the tips of his fingers) individual part that had once been the whole, including the minerals (for this he used the wet end of his pinky finger).  Spider legs and the toasty feel of smoke from the grill; the eyeball that carried with it a creamy sensation of all those times he|she|it had looked down and swallowing became like blinking against a dust storm; the noodles were like the time Grandmother had stolen a hug and moments later the Texan drew a long gray hair out from a gap in his molars; and what he’d taken for the carrot he quickly understood as daikon the taste of which was like the sound of clipper bite into thicker thumbnails.

the story Anne told. Her friend Jeanette asked well what happen to the Texan the Texan who took little Americas with him in a bottle and a bag and Anne said the Texan ordered another plate and this time when it came as it was served (and meant) he ate because for him at that moment every country on the planet tasted like the smell of approaching rain

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