It is as I come down this morning
and remember having tried to put away five
pounds of Idaho potatoes the other night
to find you had stashed twenty pounds
of sweet potatoes where I store potatoes
and onions even though we never eat them
and then having left my potatoes out because
there was no room for them and, besides,
I needed them for dinner the next night,
which was yesterday, after which I still
had a few onions and about three and a half
pounds of potatoes which I squished in
and around your sweet potatoes
and now see my empty Idaho potato bag
on the counter, all my potatoes gone,
you gone, no note (of course),
the sweet potatoes still in the pantry,
that it occurs to me when I said
you could stay, I might have lied.
Using those potatoes as an incredibly effective metaphor for a troubled relationship–perfect. You say so much in an oblique way that still evokes an emotional response.
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Thanks for this. Just feeling a little out of control in the kitchen these days!!! Are you sure it is oblique? 🙂
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❤ Because of the need to breathlessly explain those irritations that are sometimes manifested in potatoes. And for how many times you got the word 'potatoes' in here.
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this one-sentence, three-stanza poem is interesting to read. as it goes along it becomes clear that the poem is about more than potatoes, setting us up for the very last line. for me the strongest image is that of the empty bag, suggesting that the relationship is somehow empty as well.
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Thank you for that insight. Not sure I saw it myself.
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