Richard Bendey
Onion Variation - I This onion is perfectly round, its surface looks crystalline and unafraid. Imprinted with light, smooth sure delight, it smells of frost and fog. What would Mother say? "It's jewelry, dear. Just an ordinary old jewel. Please pick it up." What I never understood about my mother was how eve1ything that dropped had to be picked up, and why things always kept dropping. H er task, as if assigned from another world and sent here to earth with her...was to pick things up: objects, spirits, hearts. Everything dropped asked for a flexing and unflexing of the knees, thighs and ankles. My genius is to let things drop and watch them rot or ripen on a forest floor, in th e sodden garden weeds or on the dusty-flowered corner of a rug where this onion might show us the future as a tiny monument to staying put.
Spring/Summer 2002
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