Ode To The Garden State
Timothy Liu
Chockfull O’Nuts mixing in with Elizabeth’s sulfuric
Southerly breeze
as a groom badly bruises both of his shins on a turnstile-hop mishap
trying to catch a commuter train instead of bedding down his bride
on hay suffused with camel piss from God knows where and insects
from Peru crushed by the tens of thousands to color her grapefruit drink
designed at the flavor factory just off the Jersey Pike—volatile gasses
creeping on past the olfactory epithelium as methyl butanoic acids
eat away at workers testing lipstick and cans of cupcake frosting cut
from the same titanium dioxide stock—gas chromatographs and one-
part-per-billion head-space vapor analyzers synthesizing national taste.