I am always a sucker for a food poem. Poet Deborah Finkelstein, a colleague of mine at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. sent me an evocative one recently.  Finkelstein has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her poetry has been published widely, both online and print.

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Chopped Beets

Chop beets
on the white cutting board,
rivers of fuchsia bleed
into tiny grooves in plastic,
like blood in a paper cut
that never heals
from constant irritation
and too much salt.
Smack the knife
onto the white board,
snap, slice, stab,
slivers of beets on the board,
beet juice on your fingers
covers the blood on your hand
that you could never wash off—
you dipped your hand in the ocean
but only the salt seeped into your skin.
Slash the beets,
their insides splatter kitchen walls,
a puddle of borscht

on the ceramic floor
permeates grout,
bright scarlet
like the lipstick
that was on his collar
before the accident.

– Deborah Finkelstein

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