On the Recommendation That American Adults Consume No More Than One-Quarter Cup of Rice, Twice a Week

The rice plant drinks up arsenic,

so show good sense and change your diet.

Studies reveal, where fields were cotton

(Southern states), more contamination.

If your word for food is your word for rice,

change your word for food, or rice.

Deem it a side dish; you can will it.

Learn to love barley, amaranth, millet.

Your grandmother, in the nursing home,

sacrificed the foods of home

in exchange for shelter. You can, too.

If rice was your child’s first solid food,

serve quinoa next, then polenta, grits.

Teach your rice cooker novel tricks.

Mapo tofu may be strange on bulgur,

but your parents always adapted dinner.

If ghosts were going to wipe their brows

in heaven, they would have done it by now.

Source: Poetry (October 2020)