i’m not going to eat around strangers
i mean other people
i’ve made it very clear
the helpless Piltdown mastication 

drives me to distraction.
i look at you and I see an hourglass figure
sand in all the right niches
Clairol hair
a lipless x-ray skull filmed in profile artlessly chomping
chomping and chomping
chomping and chomping
i see that everywhere
lipless awful chomping
like a death skull but lit up by x-ray
and ravenously chomping
the mandibles and chomping more annoyingly vertical
when undisguised by fancy-flesh
you've seen the film
probably around the 4th grade
why eat after that
why ever eat again
we have to eat a little
but not in front of these assholes
idiot mandibles disrobed, no lips, no flesh
know what that looks like?
looks like the skull is smiling, smiling like an idiot
the village moron smiling and cracking his gum
smiling and chomping smiling and chomping
while a rolling shadow of x-ray chow
gets hustled around the inside of the yap
like a wilding victim, this x-rayed bolus of food
hustled and harassed from molar to molar
until finally the great heaving translucent tongue
rises out of x-ray nowhere, pulses disgustingly into the cavern
to throw the thing slickly down the back stair.
Oh yum. They’re bringing out the hors-d’oeuvres.
No thank you.
They’re bringing out the catered hors-d’oeuvres.
No thank you.
Honey, just eat a fucking hors-d’oeuvre, it’s popcorn shrimp on a Ritz cracker.
Can you even hear what you’re saying? I’m not gonna eat in front of these people.
Yes, honey.
No.
Yes.
NO.
Yesss! Honey!
DON’T YOU YES HONEY ME. Listen. C’mere. Let me take you aside.
Don’t fuck up my office party.
Some mornings I wake up and the world is a contusion.
Oh, shit. Don’t fuck up my office party.
- whole fucking world a stubbed toe –
EAT THE CRACKER
No.
What is this?
I’ll tell you what this is. Put your purse down. Put it down. Do you know what your mouth is going to do to that Ritz cracker?
I don’t —
Answer me!
You’re scaring me. You idiot!
Oh, you're scared. Take a look at an x-ray of your yap working a Ritz cracker.
I just got this job!
Smiling and chomping. You can't even call it chewing!
Sssshhh!
This whole charade is a horror show.
Ssshht! Look, just don’t think about it. How hard is that. It’s an hors-d’oeuvre. IT’S A CRACKER.
I saw the HR lady eating over there by the empanadas, that’s another thing. She put the matter in her mouth. and. it. disappeared.
…what the fuck are you talking about --
She put the food into her mouth and it disappeared. Where did it go? The mouth moves, and the jaw. The stuff doesn’t come back out. It’s gone. It’s gone! Where? Pushed down a living hole, that's where. You're cool with that? I am not. Pushed down a hole. I’m not comfortable with that. I'm not going to stand around with these jokers and push stuff into my mouth.
It does come back out! what's wrong with you!
You know what I mean
NO I DON'T
I’m not eating with those people. I am not going to beat off into a plastic vial.
Oh my fucking god
Can’t I go into a room at the clinic with a magazine. Like in the rom-coms?
Oh my god!
“Please masturbate into this brown plastic pill bottle then race it back to us before the sperm die. DRIVE YOUR SPERM ACROSS TOWN, BREAK THE SPEED LIMIT IF YOU HAVE TO. Run into the clinic like Jack Lord. Hand the pill bottle full of your sperm over to the young lady behind the front desk." huh UH! YOU masturbate into a pill bottle! YOU hand an attractive young volunteer a plastic bottle full of YOUR living sperm. You mandibular jackasses! Screw you!
<hissing> Eat the fucking cracker you asshole!! Eat the cracker!
No.