This week on the Influence: Onions!
Seriously: in keeping with last week’s post, I have decided to share this poem of mine, “Onions”, which was also revised after publication. The original of this poem found a home at The Windward Review. It came out of a writing exercise where I wrote about something I hated. The original focused mainly on the graphic nature of chopping up onions.
What I feel is better in this revision is how the poem takes on a human element by becoming an elegy.
The line “dish I was told you liked” was in the original but wasn’t fully developed. In looking back, I realized – Whoa, there’s a person in this poem completely unacknowledged.
Another revision: I have since made my peace with onions. Bring on the pico de gallo!
Onions – Jose Angel Araguz *
The bulb, hard and heavy as a fist,
The slivers that unravel like the wings
And body of an albino cockroach,
The sharp stink
Of its flesh spitting
Against the blade —
I could do without
This unwelcome act of reducing
A ghost to paper shavings
For a dish I was told you liked,
That I persist in making
Despite your absence,
Except that I believe
That what gathers
And falls from my eyes
Is a part of you
Hungry to come back
To this table.
***
Happy tabling!
jose
* originally published in The Windward Review.
