On the Oreo

It lies in wait like a cockroach on my counter, indestructible,
Evolutionary titan, alien artifact, blue wrapper,
Black and white graphic, imprinted since infancy,
One fourth of a day’s calories in six bites, Big Food love child.

It was a pity buy off a brown-skinned, mute mother
Surfing the subway with her box of stale treats.
Blasting from the next car, babe wrapped to her chest,
Her passage crafted us a sandwich

Of annoyance/anguish/annoyance, choking complacency.
I resist looking. I imagine myself
She beseeches but only with her hungry eyes
As she sways to the world’s harsh rhythms.

Has no one told her these plastic treats are toxic?
A class of people living behind their walls,
To which I too often aspire, won’t touch these brands.
While for those living outside such walls, they’re just another day.

When did my favorite after-school treat, so perfect
With a glass of milk or Kool Aid, become a brick in that wall?
Once the only controversy was whether to bite down as is,
Or split, lick and chew. Bible School was riven by the question.

Or there’s the taunt of racial sincerity,
“She’s just an Oreo.” That caustic metaphor chimes
Sharply off the world’s most popular cookie,
First engineered in New York’s Chelsea Market

Before its later heydays of trans hookers,
Drug dealers and now Google. No longer
Made in the USA. Contains a bioengineered food ingredient.
Trans fats or not, here it is, badged and blue, in my kitchen.

​A glass of milk. My little brother and me,
Breathless after our games. We each take three,
Dividing the package equally, as we do our chores.
Oh, blue devil, if I thought I’d die tomorrow, you’d be my last.