Ode to the Onion

by Sarah Brown Weitzman

How well you deserve
a poem of your own
sweet Vidalias,
sharp, squat purple
Spanish orbs,
small white delights
oval as radishes,
scallions, leeks
and ubiquitous yellows.

Layer by layer
once peeled
past your papery skins
and wispy roots
you are always the same
through and through
repeated to your core
boneless, gristleless,
leafless, fatless, veinless,
bloodless, gutless, seedless,
heartless, secretless flesh
one can count on you
always to be you.

Spanish onions
like colorful ribbons
or whites and yellows cut thin
they’re almost translucent.
All sting the eyes
but fragrant and sweet
as garlic in the skillet
part of the trilogy
in bouquet garni
for soups and sauces,
onion, this poem’s for you.

Sarah Brown Weitzman, a Pushcart nominee, has been widely published in numerous journals such as America, Art Times, The North American Review, Rattle, The Mid-American Review, The Windless Orchard, Poet Lore, Potomac Review and Poet & Critic. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her latest book, a departure from poetry, is a children’s novel, Herman and the Ice Witch, published by Main Street Rag.