How I Learned to Eat Onions

Image © Rahn Marion 2019

by Cameron Haramia May 10, 2019
A whole village of Italian chefs as baby mobile above my crib. One of them, they might say later, the most mischievous, stoops down to caress my kindling chin.   With the shard of a fucking onion peel.   Most abashed, I gloom looming eyeballs into his chef’s hat. But he is not deterred, gives me another scrap. This time I full   on bawl. The rest of the chefs ring him in, tell to keep twirling, shove the rest of the onion in his pocket. In the tussle over my fledgling   appetite, the onion falls straight into my confused mouth. Somehow perfectly. I hold it there, in shock, as tears blossom below my nose but I lie helpless. A knife then falls from his button   and ever since, they call me Solomon.   __________  

Cameron Haramia is a California-born Hoosier, who experienced a poem-inducing epiphany at age 26. This may have been the result of his elastic dancing one windy Memphis night. Haramia’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Construction Literary Magazine and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.

   

Rahn Marion is a Memphis, Tennessee native, who currently Art Directs First Congregational Church’s Art Ministry in Memphis and works at Garner Picture Framing Company. He studied at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore MD, majoring in Painting, and has a concentration in Film. Leaving Baltimore and coming back to Memphis, he’s had numerous shows with The Collective, and Orange Mound Gallery. Rahn also illustrated Memphis’s nationally known festival’s 2018 Logo, “Cooper Young Fest.” When he’s not working his 9-5, he is always painting or sketching down new ideas for future projects. Most of his work can be seen on Instagram, @rahn_marion