I have three turnips:
sharpness gathered in softening rinds
like new wine in old wineskins,
pink & white carousels
from a run-down amusement park
graffitoed by nematodes.
They fit oddly in the palm
with their rats’ tails & severed tops.
What planet are they from?
They’re marooned—no eyes
to sprout grappling hooks,
no way to win back the sun.
But when I slice them open:
starch-white deserts
unriffled by any wind.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Bridge to Nowhere
- Natural Faculties
- (Re-)Claiming the Body
- Ceiling snakes
- Train Song
- Surgery of the Absurd
- Notes toward a taxonomy of sadness
- Weeding
- Blanket
- Forecast
- Curriculum Vitae
- Lullaby
- Fist
- On Reading The Separate Rose by Pablo Neruda
- Gibbous
- Song of the Millipede
- Autumn haibun
- Bread & Water
- Jersey Shore
- Initiation
- October dusk
- Goodnight moon
- Antidote
- The Starlings
- To the Child I Never Had
- Ambitions
- Learn Harmonica Today
- Two-line haiku
- Sleeper Cell
- Unchurched
- Turnips
- Homiletics
- Magic Carpet
- When the Wind is Southerly
- Connection
- Ground Beetle
- Étude for the World’s Smallest Violin