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She put the purple cabbage in the salad bowl
and tossed it along with poison salts in the salad spinner;
Now you know she had no need to use the scissors,
or the shears, or even heat the skewers to finish off.
Twenty minutes before her husband started for home
she would add poison powder in the salt shaker,
sprinkle the veggie with spice in the saucepan,
stuff it into the stock pot, transfer the whole
into a slow cooker and wait. She had thought it all out,
no sharpening the steak knife with steel
she would not need to use the strainer or the sieve.

Her husband took the same route from the factory
they would ring her up when the chauffeur started the car.
In all her married life she had planned this moment
now the triumph would be hers and she would be heiress
to his fortune.A telephone call shattered her,'madam
there was a car accident, a hit and run, your husband died
on the spot.

She dumped her concoction into the toilet sink
and made herself a coconut soufflé.

Hi Siva,

I enjoyed reading this O'Henry & Guy de Maupassant like short short story - flash fiction.

This line is the fatal pivot: "In all her married life she had planned this moment"

The use of purple is colorfully strategic, symbolizing "victory" - here a strange victory

"dish" not needed, and maybe not "tender" either.




Michael (MV)

 
 
 

Michael
We have tender coconut souffle in Kerala.It is a watery state of coco(nut)before it becomes a hard nut.I wrote this for a theme as flash fiction and now turned it into a poem.

Hi Siva,

With your explanation, I understand the specific use of "tender," and how it is the precise word choice.

Now, as for the genre of the writing, this is a flash fiction. There are narrative poems; Stroems(story poems) is a neologism I sometimes find apropos. And, of course, since both genre are creative writing, they share literary devices.

But "The Purple Cabbage" is ultimately a flash fiction.


in the spirit of creativity



Michael (MV)

 
 
 

Don't invite me to dinner Siva! Good poem. But then, you know that.

As a universally accepted poem, this doesn't quite cut it.

You're almost there, in that you have your own way of reading this poem out loud, and by the END we (the readers) have mostly got it.

What you need to do is make us get it sooner, by sticking to a stricter meter, I say 'need', but it's more a matter of choice.

If you wanted the meter to take over there are things that you could change, but if you want to stay freeform then I'd drop a bomb or two more, else you're showing off mediocrity.

Just an opinion - I'm not a pro.