Monologue for an Onion
Do you have a favorite poem of the moment, of the month, of the year? Or even (gulp) of all time?
Here's my favorite of the moment. It's by Suji Kwock Kim.
Monologue for an Onion
I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion -- pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.Look at you, cutting and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,Of lasting union-- slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veilThat you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, who want to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion juice,Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the soil strewn with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that isNot one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.




