Radish Pyrotechnics

Rhea Tregebov. "The fire under control" in no one we know.

This is a poem that begins with the collection and consumption of vegetables (such as peppers and rhubarb and of course radishes) and moves on to consider fire that is not to be dug up.

Radishes figure a peevish,
proletarian vegetable.
When you bite them, they bite back.
This seems likes a simple innocent remark about the pungent taste of radishes. However, by poem's end we are aware that the fire under control is radioactive — after Chernobyl. The burn burns deeper.

And so for day 1523
13.02.2011