Most root vegetables are fine—the lumpy potato, the spicy radish, the sweet, tapered carrot—but beets are a pimple on the face of Mother Earth. Stagnant and soil-encrusted, they bleed magenta ooze when boiled for hours and eventually chopped into unappealing chunks. Staining lips when chewed, their gelatinous texture is akin to gnawing on lumps of overworked clay. And the taste? Like sodden dirt.
Let me be clear about one thing: if beets disappeared from the planet tomorrow, I’d neglect to weep. Not a single tear would cloud my disgusted eye if I never saw their maroon-shaded orbs again.
So, why did I plant them in my garden? Beets me…
Daughters
(palindrome poem)
I feel you right here—
though I’m not home now,
I know you in my heart,
blood of my own,
my girls. To me,
your names mean “love.”
My girls—to me,
blood of my own.
I know you in my heart—
though I’m not home now,
I feel you right here.
Clickbait
(Waltmarie poem)
the polluted stream of news cycles and
rumors
from tomorrow’s headlines, worse than today’s
become
a primal scream about countries facing
carnage
suicide drones, illiterate schools, seas rising, hope sinking
until
I look out my window to hear the apocalypse of
birdsong
Alison McBain is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author with work published in Litro, Write City Ezine, and Grain Magazine. Her novels have won/been finalists for over thirteen awards, including the Foreword INDIES. When not writing, she’s associate editor for the literary magazine ScribesMICRO and administrator for The Scribes Prize. She is a lifetime member of the Chicago Writers Association.
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