14 Lines on How the Irish and Italian Cultivate Tomatoes

This belly-can has its rusted jags--
the years, the years of neurotic admixture:
I am of the two great "I's" of the late
nineteenth century-- baker, barber, goombah,
bobby, bleeding drunk on the corner of Great Jones,
pale strapping-lad in frocking robes
The two "I's" of I pull along
the acid branded winds of San Marzano
the skimmed fat of fair-chipped Tipperary
(where they grill ripe cherries into wrinkled bursts)
All of this thrown into my can, can, Ameri-can
double-boil of simmered down brand new immigrant
emerging every day from the the lower decks-- up,
up into the dust-colored light of a slow-peeled tornado