Geraldine Monk
THE GREGARIOUS POTATO
It has raised me to a child again. When
I ask what and why and then the answer
comes I’m no nearer getting it than when I
didn’t get it all those years ago when I was told an
all-loving god made a world of pain and want and wars.
I don’t get the sheer prettiness of our killer. It plays us
for fools. Flimflams. Lulls. Flirts its jujubes of fruity
beauty. Nebula nurseries. Bright-eyed infant stars.
It echoes bridal bouquets. Geometric asters. Scabious.
Midwinter baubles. Fabergé eggs. Free will.
The word ‘virus’ derives from Sanskrit
Zend and ancient Greek. Poison. It means poison.
But these are poisons which live and think. Mutate.
Self-replicate. Invisible to the eye they come out in
the smalls hours and glow in your sleepless dark. Ghost-
cling to your bedroom ceiling. Burrow in your unwashed clothes.
A virus is an ‘Organism at the edge of life’, who wrote that?
Unpack that for me? I thought poets were the organisms
at the edge of life. These viruses not only kill us they usurp
our identity. Is the ‘edge of life’ the place where rocks
yelp and organisms discuss plots and strategies?
It’s sobering news. ‘The edge of life’ is mighty crowded.
Beings that collectively think without a brain are
everywhere. I have mulled and marvelled this ever since
I discovered my potatoes were gregarious and thrived in each
other’s company. Empathy is not the special preserve of animals.
The truth is I read words like lipids or vectors and
a feathery itch darts up my spine and bristles my scalp.
Here’s another v-fact I don’t get. They wear a neat little
multi-coloured coat of protein and indulge in
horizontal gene transfer which is why they loves parties.
It’s enough to put me off eating nuts.
It’s the consciousness without a brain I’ve
never got: the quickness of kitchen mould
the precision timing of vascular plants
the fiendish cleverness of viruses
the low yielding crop of a lonely potato.
It has raised me to a child again. When
I ask what and why and then the answer
comes I’m no nearer getting it than when I
didn’t get it all those years ago when I was told an
all-loving god made a world of pain and want and wars.
I don’t get the sheer prettiness of our killer. It plays us
for fools. Flimflams. Lulls. Flirts its jujubes of fruity
beauty. Nebula nurseries. Bright-eyed infant stars.
It echoes bridal bouquets. Geometric asters. Scabious.
Midwinter baubles. Fabergé eggs. Free will.
The word ‘virus’ derives from Sanskrit
Zend and ancient Greek. Poison. It means poison.
But these are poisons which live and think. Mutate.
Self-replicate. Invisible to the eye they come out in
the smalls hours and glow in your sleepless dark. Ghost-
cling to your bedroom ceiling. Burrow in your unwashed clothes.
A virus is an ‘Organism at the edge of life’, who wrote that?
Unpack that for me? I thought poets were the organisms
at the edge of life. These viruses not only kill us they usurp
our identity. Is the ‘edge of life’ the place where rocks
yelp and organisms discuss plots and strategies?
It’s sobering news. ‘The edge of life’ is mighty crowded.
Beings that collectively think without a brain are
everywhere. I have mulled and marvelled this ever since
I discovered my potatoes were gregarious and thrived in each
other’s company. Empathy is not the special preserve of animals.
The truth is I read words like lipids or vectors and
a feathery itch darts up my spine and bristles my scalp.
Here’s another v-fact I don’t get. They wear a neat little
multi-coloured coat of protein and indulge in
horizontal gene transfer which is why they loves parties.
It’s enough to put me off eating nuts.
It’s the consciousness without a brain I’ve
never got: the quickness of kitchen mould
the precision timing of vascular plants
the fiendish cleverness of viruses
the low yielding crop of a lonely potato.
© Copyright Geraldine Monk 2021
The most recent of Geraldine Monk’s many collections of poetry is They Who Saw The Deep, published by Parlor Press in 2016. Salt produced her Selected Poems in 2013. She edited Cusp: Recollections of Poetry in Transition (Shearsman 2012). She is an affiliated poet at Sheffield University Centre for Poetry and Poetics.