Meatballs flippant as marshmallows. Spaghetti crawling about like nematodes. He doesn't like his food to generate similes. He wants it to stand still. Across the table that same old hirsute girlfriend prods her food with her fork and determines that this pasta came from a pasta tree that hadn't sufficiently matured. Harvesting pasta too early encourages matter that can never die, even when boiled al dente. She reminds him that in that movie about the sinking ship and the smirking iceberg Leonardo what's his name and his creepy lover hold hands all the way down the gullet of the cold Atlantic. Wouldn't you like to hold hands? He looks at his ape-like paw and decides it's too ugly to eat with, so he lowers his chin to his plate and snorts a length of spaghetti that's actually the yarn of his sweater. As he unravels himself he laughs a laugh so rueful he seems to be self-digesting, while her meatballs, he observes, are holding hands.
Luca Penne
lives in New Hampshire and builds timber-frame barns for a living. His work has appeared in many journals, including Furnace Review, 2 River View, Otoliths, and others. He has an MFA from Southwestern Missouri State, where he won the Emerson-Tate Award for his writing.