More Musings from the Turnip Man

© 1998 E. P. Allan
All rights reserved.

A man was sitting in a restaurant when his right
earlobe fell to the dirty wooden floor, splatting precisely
on one of the seams like a piece of wet tissue. He picked
it up and sniffed it. The smell was reminiscent of old
turnips. He smiled. Old turnips always reminded him
of his mother; actually any piece of vegetable reminded
him of her. He could still see the sack of onions she
turned into, green sprouts growing like eyeless fingers
out of the hemp sack that was her body. And how
many could say the row of onions in the garden was his
mother? Had she not become Christ—take eat this is
my body cooked in beef stock in remembrance of you, or
something like that. Christ would have said it if he
could have turned into an onion. In fact, would not the
whole world be better off if everybody turned into a
vegetable—countries of yams, parsnips, and, of course,
turnips. Yes, yes, he would be king in a world with
people planted in neat rows with fuzzy patches of green
smelly stuff sprouting from their heads, their bodies
swelling purple and white, filling earth with a thick,
intoxicating aroma.

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