Laurie Blauner
I place the strange vegetable, growing extravagantly in my barren backyard, into my refrigerator. It is a hard, round, green ball with spikes and long, trailing tentacles for reaching through ground to find more space in my yard. I hurt my back digging it out from the soil, crisscrossed with its tangling shoots. It is insistent in its subjugation. I notice itinerant gloriously-colored flowers creeping over my fence, towards the neighbors, as fast as they can leave. I call the vegetable Mugolan, unable to find it listed anywhere. I lick the cold, bright green bulb, its green tubers dangling, after removing it from the refrigerator. It tastes of salt, water, rocks, and ginger. It is exotic. I wonder how it chose and then arrived in my backyard, which previously hadn't allowed anything much to grow there. It is abundant. Since I don't die or sicken I nibble a spot, my teeth penetrating the thick skin and arrive at a soft, wet, light green interior that juices briefly down my chin. The taste is fruity, sweet, and good. I wipe the drops away. All day I think about the vegetable. I open the refrigerator to check on it and it takes up half the space, even with its tendrils curled around itself.
I whisper, Where do you come from and where do you think you are going?
I laugh, Mugolan, do you want to take over the world?
But, of course, it doesn't answer me although its vines are loosening, hanging over the shelves and slipping up the back of the refrigerator. I'm wondering what it might taste like in a salad, with other vegetables, or cooked and sauced because the raw bite hasn't hurt me and there is so much of it. I peek out the window and see tiny Mugolans beginning to spring up in the ground space I just cleared. I find and search my cookbook for recipes, sitting in the living room.
Suddenly there is an odd noise in the kitchen. I go in and see the vegetable inching out from the refrigerator. Something inside me understands its need to escape and grow. Its desire for more. I'm not sure what to do. I try to lift my kitchen chopping knife but it, too, has grown long invisible roots into the countertop and won 't be budged, while the vegetable refuses to stop approaching.