Another of Bean Newton's (in)famous list poems, "The Greedy Bean" was discovered by chance being used as a bookmark in the Purewater Public Library in a book of ancient Pictish recipes as postulated by traditional Celtic stories and Roman tales of conquest.
The depiction of the self as omniphage was actually rather common in Newton's poetry, perhaps a nod to Whitman's contention that he "contain[ed] multitudes," but updated for a decidedly more polluted age.
There is no date known for this piece, but it appears to be whole and, oddly, to have been mimeographed. An original manuscript is unknown, and other copies remain elusive. -- Mary Chino Cherry
The Greedy Bean
He eats
the butt
ends of brunt days, the weeds, clinging
to trucks' back ends, the dump
gas and the gutter wash, the cup
lids and straw wrappers, the blinged-
out 4-door Impalas as they drop
from Incan heavens, the crusted
noodles accrued on the sidewalk
and the empty vodka bottles nestled
next to them, the grass chat and the pipe-blow,
the cellophane and Nickleback CDs, the spew-
cream and the beard-clippings, the cereal crunchies
and the fridge-glow, the neat beaks
of budgies and lady cardinals, the oozing
pools of fracking fluid and the odd
wildcatter's leather glove, the cracks that measure
a parkinglot's heat, vinyl tube and footsweat,
assmeat and beanfroth, turkey-baster
dingleberries and heart-chaff and gruel, nut-
wood and tool-oil and crinkle-paint carhoods,
devil's claw and ambergris and cardboard
cut-outs of William Shatner ca. Wrath of Khan,
diaper-drool and mooseturd pie and lanky troves
of almond groves, tripe valves and trickle-berries
and graceless falls from hotel balconies, neutral tones
and mem'ry foam and terror-induced hose-runs
and arterial hemorrhage and balloon hash
and hot-rendered babyfat and grundle-buns
and picklefart and jew's harp and malt-epoxy
hoecake butter daddies, turnbuckle booze
farms and mousse-draw ego-waffles and the passage
of all that heaves, hauls, or shimmers like shook
Hopkins, drying in the dying of the sun.