A Good Cry
April 26 2015


The purple onion
on the kitchen counter
is so pleasingly round,
with a solid centred heft.
A generous middle
between a tuft of roots, and shrivelled stem;
like a fat-bellied man
with skinny appendages.

I tear up
chopping onions, blinking back.
This is not a good cry;
not the kind
that releases pain, expels the poison.
When the warm salt
is a close embrace,
and the blurred vision
makes you feel safe,
and the self-pity
is hot exquisite relief.

Layers
peel back easily.
Distinct, yet somehow continuous,
curve nesting in curve
smaller and smaller
spiralling-in.

I think of other works of art;

the chambered nautilus,

the tightly packed rose

before it unfurls.

Pearl-white shells,

with the sharp sweetness, invisible sting
of dark chemistry;
well-armed
for life underground.
My tears well up
running down.

Diced onions glisten,
immersed
in hot virgin oil
in a heavy pan,

cast iron, seasoned black.

Lightly fried, until they sweat,

soften
turn translucent
lose their edge.

My tears have dried
tight with salt.
But not a real cry
which has been too long to remember.
A good cry,
when I overflowed
with warm salty wetness.
Was so bereft
I didn't care who saw,
huffing, and blubbering
and sniffling snot.
Was overwhelmed
with incontinent feelings
and awful thoughts.

An onion
is surprisingly thin-skinned.
It appears tough,
but strips cleanly off

in long papery curves.

Or sticks,

breaking into purple flecks.

And under its skin

so many layers, so many intricate shells
you could never tell
just by looking.


I had no idea what to write, until I saw a purple onion on the counter: its beautiful skin; its fullness and heft; its complex pattern, in dark and light. I love onions in most everything. But, like everyone else, they make me tear up. It's an empty cry: one that stings, but without the cathartic release of deep emotion. The good cry may come during bad times; but at least isn't just irritated eyes and noxious chemistry.

The cliché is that "men don't cry". So here, the onion is a metaphor for the tough exterior and hidden depths. Of course, the cliché is a ridiculously dated view of masculinity: to be a man is to be strong; and strength is being secure enough to feel your emotions, and open and unafraid enough to express them. The personification of the onion -- the fat-bellied man -- foreshadows this, right from the opening stanza.

I needed a rhyme to make that 2nd last paragraph flow. "Snot" was obvious, but I was dubious it would sound true to the narrator's voice: too vernacular and irreverent. Surprisingly, it seems to work. And I think especially well, since it's a really visceral term, and so compliments the idea of unselfconscious release, expiation, catharsis.

I indulged in a minor tangent with all the detail around the onions sweating in the cast iron pan. I think I liked the visual here: the white and the black, the soft and the hard. And a little bit of mischief that means nothing at all: the virgin oil!

I like awful thoughts. Because it can be read in two ways, and so reclaim the word from its somewhat debased usage: that is, not just something terrible, but something that inspires awe. After all, we don't just cry out of misery: we cry from happiness; we cry when we are overwhelmed by some experience, by big thoughts, by feelings of transcendence; and we cry out of empathy, mirroring the emotions of others. ...And, going back to that hoary cliché, the lyrics to an Ian Tyson song come to mind: sometimes, it's just dust in your eye ;-) .

I'm pleased with the way the very last line brings home the theme of tough exterior, hidden depths: the way just by looking seems to come a little unexpectedly, and with such plain speaking. I often succumb to the neat rhyming couplet to end a poem: tempted by how that little punch of rhyme punctuates the ending like a big fat period. Here, just by looking does the opposite. By breaking out of the rhyme, it gives you pause: as if suddenly speaking in prose, speaking directly.

As usual, I've put a lot of first person voice into this poem. As I've said before, I love first person poetry: it's personal and intimate; it has the power of authenticity; it doesn't presume anything about the reader, leaving her free to either invest, or keep her distance. I'm always striving for an easy conversational tone, and I think I'm getting closer in this poem. By "conversational", I mean that it doesn't seem stiff and stylized; that the rhymes don't sound shoe-horned in; and that it sounds effortless, so the reader can fall into the easy flow without seeing the gears turn. The trick is to keep it conversational, but tight: without the flabbiness and excess verbiage of real conversation.

A Good Cry has a small ambiguity that works for me. There is good, as in thorough, effective; but there is also the good of goodness. Which creates a slight internal tension: the contradiction between good and a cry, which isn't usually thought of as a very good thing at all.