Mabel Lee

SALAD NIGHT

I've murdered the cook
in this mansion mystery—

Look, my hands are slick
like a surgeon’s when he searches

for this or that organ,
I've even got the knife and heart

to prove it. It's bigger
and rounder than most

and has gone quite still,
except for its tendency

to stain the kitchen tiles
and cutting board a ghastly

red (would a killer use
such a word, ghastly?)

To remove and conceal
all evidence I've ground

the fist-sized thing up
and put it into the mix

as tasty, chewy beet.


Mabel reads "Salad Night":



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Mabel confesses: "Beets are so delicious, and their overwhelming red tends to get everywhere. I let my imagination run one night as I was preparing a big, juicy salad, and that's how this poem began."

MABEL LEE is a poet and foreign language enthusiast who has recently returned to hometown Philadelphia from a teaching career in Madrid. She has been published as part of the Sips Cards poetry and short story initiative and is also the editor of the e-zine The Plum Plum. She enjoys blogging, reading, yoga, and long bouts of laughter, as well as traveling to far corners of the earth.