Still Life With Onions, by Peggy Landsman

Starry Night Over the Rhone, by Vincent Van Gogh, (Netherlands) 1888.

​
Still Life With Onions
 
Van Gogh ate his paint
worked quickly
and died
 
he was so sloppy
so hungry
 
he couldn't wait to free his palette
cover his canvases thick
 
he couldn't wait for chrome-yellow love
infinite night-sky blue
to dry
 
he had to lick his light fresh.
 
as I cut onions into chunks--
never delicate, translucent slices
 
coming down hard at irregular angles
gouging the board
mixing wood splinters in
 
I think about the unusual way
I'm told I have with a knife.
 
I bet Vincent tore into his bread
left his teeth marks in wedges of cheese
completely neglected on countless occasions
to clean up after himself.
 
and what's wrong with big chunks of onion?
the savage charge of having to eat?
 
eyes burning, tears streaming
I see through it all--
 
the last temptation of light.

​Peggy Landsman

This poem was first published at Liberty Hill Poetry Review.

Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in many literary journals and anthologies, including The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press), Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C&R Press), and, most recently, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology Of Subversive Verse(Lost Horse Press), SWWIM Every Day, and Mezzo Cammin. She currently lives in South Florida where she swims in the warm Atlantic Ocean every chance she gets. https://peggylandsman.wordpress.com/