Kapusta
By Mary McGinnis
I love how the words in other languages
sometimes sound like the things themselves,
kapusta, cabbage in Polish and Yugoslavian,
explosive, green or red,
a delicious word and somehow jolly.
Naranjo, orange in Spanish, mildly
decorative, and Lunes in Spanish
Monday, a flat, colorless moon.
Ashes sound like what they are,
a sound frail and persistent.
Listen to them: ashes to ashes.
I hope golumpki is a sticky cooky.
I know Koreans make kimchee out of cabbage
which is fermented. And if it’s a choice between ferment
and foment,
I think we should foment,
because the facts are never the whole story, because we know
so little while we know so much.