Ian Demsky

The Good Knife

These radishes recall those radishes.
Crisp, white-tipped torpedoes halved and piled
on a black plate, an anthill of salt. 
And I remember trying and trying to make 
just one good photograph
of the way the light was lisping into that tidy cave à manger
through the big glass doors on the Rue de Paradis.
You were so patient with me. 

The specimens in this local bunch are nearly spherical,
and, instead of dusty pink, the kind of steadfast red
only Marina Abramović could wear. This will be my first time
eating them roasted. And I watch as with the good knife
you pare off the tops, knowing that in the oven they will wilt
to a mere suggestion of themselves.

 Soon you shift the skillet, our long-seasoned
wedding gift, up to the stovetop, folding in butter to brown,
chile flake, coarse black pepper, honey, vinegar.
And that impregnable red gets me thinking, leap-wise,
about that early piece of hers — Abramović — set in an airport.
The announcements are on a loop.
The plane is always leaving, immediately,
from a gate impossibly far.

Ian Demsky spent a decade as a newspaper reporter in Nashville, Tenn., Portland, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash., before launching a second career as a science writer for the University of Michigan. His poems have previously appeared in publications including Sulfur and Chelsea, and in the anthology Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. He lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. with his wife, Kelly.