Onion Planet

Round but pudgy,
like a Phoenician flask,
and more layers than
Saturn has rings,
color, a grayish-white,
and trailing stringy roots.

And what a smell,
pungent, acrid,
as raw an atmosphere
as any planet
that ever hitched
its silicate wagon
to a sun.

Mrs Evans lost
her eldest, Roy,
in the tragic
expedition to its surface,
five years back.

You should see
her cut an onion now.
No tears in her eyes
but that hacked-up vegetable
rains them.

John Grey has been published recently in Agni, Hubbub, South Carolina Review and The Journal Of The American Medical Association. His latest book is “What Else Is There?” from Main Street Rag.

Find more by John Grey in the Author Index.

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.