Poem by Lissa Perrin

Why I Like Ketchup

It’s hard to pay attention
to what’s on the board, to care
that three times seven is twenty-one,
that our state bird is a robin or
that I’m supposed to say isn’t, not ain’t.
All I can think about is my empty belly,
and the smell of boiling hot dogs.
I’m so hungry, I hurt.

It’s my favorite school-lunch day, though.
The ʼdogs are good, but
those little ketchup packages
make it the best for me.
I like the tiny crackers in cellophane bags
when we have chili, too,
but they get smashed up too fast.
Ketchup packs travel better in my pockets.

I take as many as I can get, before the lunch lady,
Mrs. Penny, with that net thing on her head,
gives me the eye. I have to put some back.
She’s cool though. Sometimes she’ll slip me
an extra apple, a bag of chips or a cookie, secret-like.
My friend takes some extra ketchup packs for me, too.
He knows I like them. He never asks me why.
And I never tell him, ʼcause that hurts my belly, too.

Mrs. Penny said once that some old white guy
said ketchup was a vegetable. He sure was dumb
even if he was the President. Even a third grader
knows that ketchup comes from tomatoes
and that tomatoes are fruit.
I don’t know about mustard though.
Maybe it’s a vegetable.
Whatever it is, you can have it.

​On the bus home I open one ketchup packet.
Squeezing the thick sweetness into my mouth,
I let it sit a minute on my tongue
before it slips and slides down my throat.
Only one. That’s my rule ʼcause it’s getting near the end
of the month. It’ll make supper taste better for me and Mama.
All we’ve got left is stale bread that’s pretty hard
to swallow and tomorrow’s Saturday.

Lissa Perrin is a retired clinical social worker from Ann Arbor, MI. She is a co-host of the Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle cwcircle.poetry.blog and is grateful to have had a number of her poems published.