RED READ

Ape - by Russell Edson, 1976

You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father,
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

I've had enough monkey, cried father.

You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough,
said father.

I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said
mother.

Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay
the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured
skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These
aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.

Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread,
said mother.

Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into
its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother.

I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a
jockstrap, screamed father.

Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything
more than simple meat, screamed mother.

Well what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates?
screamed father.

Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature?
That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after
we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after
breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband,
that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ?

I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night,
cried father.






"Ape" is a great poem because it builds itself on an aspect of humanity that everyone can relate to: the chemistry between people (especially man and woman) around food. When one shows more interest in dissecting the intricacies of the food's preparation, the other is guzzling it down for quick pleasure; when one is playing with a piece of it on his fork, the other is slicing a piece into ribbons. When one is talking politics, the other is contextualizing what he is hearing with the help of models of national boundaries, outlined with the food on his plate.

What keeps people engaged with one another around food, and what has been the evolution from "feeding frenzy" to "Stevenson, party of five," is the conversation. This conversation in "Ape," while it may be contrasting different perspectives of food as both art and necessity, may ultimately serve as a metaphor for the debate around human evolution, and its constant state of reform and objection. The woman's persistence is what I find odd about this poem (not that the ribbons on the apes privates are not odd), because she is not cooking for the sake of nourishing her husband, but for the sake of force feeding him an idea. If this poem is read as one about evolution, the question becomes, who in this poem is the scientist and who is the creationist?