Branded

Each produce department stores
humid perpetual harvest,
burgeons each day with bountiful
eggplants from El Salvador
Chilean grapes
melons from Sinaloa
California kiwis
Oregon raspberries.

Fruit is labeled---
one tiny sticky
per piece---
³Dole², ³Sylvan²,
³Pictsweet².
A company
credits itself.
³Yum² yell most

tomatoes¹,
premature prophesies
gassed green.
The hymn might better resound,
From deity and nature, with
selection, out of Juana¹s & Jorge¹s
hands, by their calloused fingers.

by Elizabeth I. Riseden