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.

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