I dislike you, cabbage. Your tight-fisted order
yielding to my little knives with your
immaculate squeaks. Your rotund indifference to all
that falls away. The fact you feed me through the winter,
through the centuries, and I dislike my need,
the shadows of my lifting fingers cast by your
green light, and all my old sorrow. I dislike
your density, as if the world lacked space, your pure
white heart that open fields can’t heat, the way
you fall apart when cooked. You’re such a poor loser.
Plus it takes so very long to finish all of you.
I can say without reservation, I hate
all the casual ways you’re so unseemly chaste,
so haughty in your modesty, so moderately good.
Previously published in Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and reprinted in Verse Daily.
Marcela Sulak, author of “Decency” and “Immigrant,” has translated four collections of poetry from Israel, Habsburg Bohemia and Congo-Zaire, and co-edited “Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Literary Genres.” She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
