The Mustard Seed: A Natural Foods Grocer - Paperback

by Sugar Le Fae (Author)

Welcome to the Mustard Seed, your locally-sourced, gay-owned, natural foods grocer! Our cashier, "Zachary," will guide you through the aisles. In Grocery, you'll find purple-haired, bisexual dread. In Supplements, overpriced herbs for every internet ailment. Produce stocks $5 apples, but the weed is cheap. (Ask the manager.) Cold-cuts and drunk sluts in the Deli. The Hot Bar costs $20 a plate, and all leftovers are thrown away by hungry employees, per management. If you drink mud, visit our Coffee Station. We also sell a variety of kombuchas and gluten-free, nonalcoholic IPAs for sober celiac's. And don't forget to check out the guys at the Juice Bar, like our oversexed owner does every time he visits unannounced. Feel free to leave your shopping cart in the parking lot.

Sugar le Fae's debut collection, The Mustard Seed, is a nuanced-queer, sad, funny, biting-reflection on American consumerism and the commiseration among service workers. In its structure, this verse memoir borrows from classical song cycles or the concept albums of Tori Amos. The poems flow like scenes, a mix-tape, a dozen short films in each season. These regular cadences allow for bite-sized worldbuilding that adds up to a meal. Particular attention is paid to line-breaks-that unique poetic mechanism for stacking meanings. At its best, this collection lays language bare, makes it aware of itself, slows us down. And if nothing else, there's nothing else like it.