Beets
“Memory makes demands darker than my own” —Jericho Brown
Do you like beets? my husband asks. I do.
Taproots pulled from dirt by scarlet-veined stems—
steamed, they taste of dirt and hearth-smoke, sweet
with time and dark. Their fuchsia stains like a sunrise
whatever they touch. Stained as I am by secrets, time,
and old mistakes, how could I not like beets?
We eat, and our white bowls swirl crimson, like sinks
where bloody hands were rinsed. Absurd—
I know it’s beets, but still my heart lurches. Absurd blood
pulsing as if some old shame lay leaking, bare.
Oh, hallways, nightmares, hollow house laid bare:
surely at seventy I’m no longer four.
Surely at seventy I’m no longer four and when
my husband asks if I like beets, I do.
Do you like beets? my husband asks. I do.
Taproots pulled from dirt by scarlet-veined stems—
steamed, they taste of dirt and hearth-smoke, sweet
with time and dark. Their fuchsia stains like a sunrise
whatever they touch. Stained as I am by secrets, time,
and old mistakes, how could I not like beets?
We eat, and our white bowls swirl crimson, like sinks
where bloody hands were rinsed. Absurd—
I know it’s beets, but still my heart lurches. Absurd blood
pulsing as if some old shame lay leaking, bare.
Oh, hallways, nightmares, hollow house laid bare:
surely at seventy I’m no longer four.
Surely at seventy I’m no longer four and when
my husband asks if I like beets, I do.
November / December 2022
Ruth Hoberman is a writer living in Newtonville, Massachusetts. Since her 2015 retirement from Eastern Illinois University, where she taught for thirty years, she has published poetry in such journals as RHINO, Comstock Review, One Art, and South Florida Poetry Journal.
Art: Japanese Garden II. Oil on canvas. T. Aguilera.