O, Grape-Nuts!
                 or more 
                 truthfully:
                                   the store brand: 
                                   O, Nutty Nuggets!

I choose you over Toaster Strudels.
                                                 Your box is always heavier than the others.
                                                  I feel you are an investment: I feel you

                        in my teeth: you hurt my molars–so small, so firm, so dense you dig
                        into the crevassey texture of old cavities, long filled
                        but very sensitive, thank you, so near the nerve. 

Grape-Nuts!    eating you
                                    is actually absurd: 
                                    you taste like boys
                                    like:  
                                    their cornchippy body odor and: 
                                    unbrushed teeth like:
                                    the old shoes of a boy
                                    that I politely requested be left 
                                    in the next room over or 
                                    outside?

O, Nutty Nuggets!  This poor hurtprideboy hurled back his own barb: 
                    that I smell:
                                                     pungent and artificial. 

                    Hurtprideboy! I have been practicing this smell for years. 
                    I have been practicing this smell for you.
                    Hurtprideboy, it’s called deodorant, it’s called toothpaste
                    it’s called GoldBond, fucking look it up.  It’s called your mom
                    telling you that you stink: 
                                                                          early and often. 

Nutty Nuggets, for years, I repeated his words to myself:
                                     in the shower: with my neon soap or
                                     stepping into a cloud of scent: 
                                     named Princess or
                                     spritzing goo into my hair
                                     that smells like: 
                                                                                       the sweet chemical fruitflowers of my youth 
                                                                                       like:
                                                                                                the idea of a naked girl 
                                                                                                  pungent and artificial 

My first sweetheart tells me: They should bottle your scent.
I tell him: They do. 

O, Nutty Nuggets,
                 let me apologize!
                The smell of you is not an insult.
                 I love you, after all, consume you,
                 would never sugar you.

   I buy unscented lotion now
   slick heaps of white entubbed.
   Grape-Nuts, did I learn to love myself? 
   I smell like:
                     a grandmother like:
                                                                                     someone with a rash. 

But you cannot imagine, Moistureless Grit Nuggets:
                                                                                                                    the ethereal softness of my skin. 

My grandmother once felt my wrist and said 
boys would stroke her wrists (Oh, Laurel!) 
and tell her how soft she was (You’re so soft!). 

At the time:
                        the whole thing seemed rather unbelievable:
                                                                                                                                   her arms were wrinkly.

Today:
                  I doubt her not! I grew up
                  to boys stroking me 
                  and telling me:

how soft 
my skin!                      

O, Grape-Nuts! O, estrogen! O, mysteries of Woman!

These compliments, this lifetime of lotion.
I have let you sit too long to write this poem! 

Forgive me:
                                 you have gone soft:
                                                                                and I preferred you before.

  O! Loving you is lunacy!

Once: 
                                                  I dipped two fingers:
                                                  in my grandmother’s cow print tub.
                                                  it’s cream she told me 
                                                  so I stuck them :  in my mouth.