Cabbage
Large gatherings of people are oppressive:
the claustrophobic swells of voices,
the stickiness of too-close skin, the odours
of lunch lingering on collective breath.
Reunions. Strangers meeting and leaving
still strangers. Conversation attempted
where an exit beacon beckons nearby:
questions that poke into skin eyeballs mouths,
foreign hands that grab stomachs
searching for signs of procreation,
lips that blather about blissful births and parenthood joys,
voices muted by the screeches of bored and hungry children.
There is no comfort in the warm potato salad
and stale rolls. Consolation can only
be unearthed in the bowls and bowls of coleslaw.
There is solace in mountains of shredded cabbage;
it has been fed through the grater,
has felt the grating of nerves.
Midway through dinner, it is easier to steal outside
into cool silent air to inhale narcotic aloneness
and pick cabbage, shred by shred from clenched teeth.
published in The Red Crow Review
Spring/Summer 1999
print