Subscribe: by Email | in Reader

Song to Onions -- Roy Blount Jr.

 
(Poem #251)Song to Onions
 They improve everything, pork chops to soup,
 And not only that but each onion's a group.
 
 Peel back the skin, delve into tissue
 And see how an onion has been blessed with issue.
 
 Every layer produces an ovum:
 You think you've got three then you find you've got fovum.
 
 Onion on on—
 Ion on onion they run,
 Each but the smallest one's some onion's mother:
 An onion comprises a half-dozen other.
 
 In sum then an onion you could say is less
 Than the sum of its parts.
 But then I like things that more are than profess—
 In food and the arts.
 
 Things pungent, not tony.
 I'll take Damon Runyon
 Over Antonioni—
 Who if an i wanders becomes Anti-onion.
 I'm anti-baloney.
 
 Although a baloney sandwich would
 Right now, with onions, be right good.
 
 And so would sliced onions,
 Chewed with cheese,
 Or onions chopped and sprinkled
 Over black-eyed peas:
 
 Black-eyed,
 grey-gravied,
 absorbent of essences,
 eaten on New Year's Eve
 peas.
-- Roy Blount Jr.