Attack Of The Squash People by Marge Piercy

[conuly]

And thus the people every year
in the valley of humid July
did sacrifice themselves
to the long green phallic god
and eat and eat and eat.
They're coming, they're on us,
the long striped gourds, the silky
babies, the hairy adolescents,
the lumpy vast adults
like the trunks of green elephants.
Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;
sauté with olive oil and cumin,
tomatoes, onion; frittata;
casserole of lamb; baked
topped with cheese; marinated;
stuffed; stewed; driven
through the heart like a stake.

Get rid of old friends: they too
have gardens and full trunks.
Look for newcomers: befriend
them in the post office, unload
on them and run. Stop tourists
in the street. Take truckloads
to Boston. Give to your Red Cross.
Beg on the highway: please
take my zucchini, I have a crippled
mother at home with heartburn.

Sneak out before dawn to drop
them in other people's gardens,
in baby buggies at churchdoors.
Shot, smuggling zucchini into
mailboxes, a federal offense.

With a suave reptilian glitter
you bask among your raspy
fronds sudden and huge as
alligators. You give and give
too much, like summer days
limp with heat, thunderstorms
bursting their bags on our heads,
as we salt and freeze and pickle
for the too little to come.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/attack-of-the-squash-people/

Comments

[sabotabby]

Zucchini shouldn't count as squash. Fight me, Marge.

[conuly]

Oh, just toss it in the air and it'll come down squash.

[sabotabby]

HAH

[acelightning73]

Every year at Lughnasadh, my High Priestess used to read that poem during the ritual. July 1 is too early - the harvest doesn't begin until August. But Lughnasadh is the beginning of the harvest. We reap and process the grain into flour and bake bread that will stay edible for a long time. We brew beer from the grain, which will keep until spring. We pick the summer fruits and berries, and make wine - and we make jam and preserves, for a taste of summer during the long hungry season. That's the conundrum of harvest - a sudden plenty too bountiful to deal with, which we have to deal with in order to keep us from runnning out of food before the first planting and harvest of the next year. I bake some bread with cornmeal in it, and boil down berries into jam and can it. So we celebrate Lughnasa (Lammas) with the products of our own labor and land (the berries grew wild in my back yard).

[rebeccmeister]

Somehow I'd never heard this poem before, but I will now proceed to make great use of it. Thank you!!

[adafrog]

lol Love it.

[malada]

Yes, it's almost that time again around here where you must lock your car up or find it full of zucchini.

Except for zucchini bread I never had a love for them.

[darkoshi]

Hah! I made one stir fry dish with a giant zucchini and some green beans Friday night, and another with zucchini and yellow squash tonight. All from a family friend's garden.