[i]The World's Worst Lasagna[/i] My mother cooks a great lasagna for those young and growing boys. And, like that candy witching hut you find in fucked-up fairy tales, you get to see yourself inside an oven (like your ancestors— although the coma is the context clue, they're white, and y'all forgot) and hope that twenty-eight weeks later you emerge unscathed by flame, sautéed with love and caramel and sweets and other bitter things. Yes, eating is compulsory—and clean your plate, my dear, my deer. The alternating layers of oppressive self-indulgence near some wicked ego pity make the dish a loathsome soup of meat when underneath is fur and bone and all the things you'd rather not imbibe—and yet, you must despise yourself to win and say your work is all complete and utter slop, else where will all the fishing go? They say that every mother's recipe should start with love—they're right. The cooking is the art, but everyone's a critic 'cause they ate lasagna once when they were young, so back into the stove you go: [i]"You need a bit more time to cook," she says, "the worms ate Poe post-death—[/i] [i]a year or two to get more black around the margin's edge, more good,[/i] [i]more old, as, if you're perfect now, there's nowhere left to go, my deer."[/i]