Poetry

1.
Marigold, chrysanthemum sprawl
across the garden, smelling like some acrid
medicine when you tear the stems, but the stink
of ivy’s worse, like air inside a rotting
log. A plant so tough should cure your worst
disease. You’ve burned your hand? Try ivy
as a poultice, leaves across your blisters
tied with the stringy roots until, despairing,
the burns agree to heal.

There’s graffiti on the mushroom shed
painted large, defiant,
in nothing like earth tones.
No brown, no beige, no muted gray,
(colors more appropriate
for the growing fungus within)
but loud raucous

My lover has two glass eyes.
She plucks them out
and we shoot them like marbles
in my driveway. At parties, she floats
them in the punch bowl,
and waits for the screams
after they are scooped into a cup.

Two pairs of shoes on a bare closet floor: an interior view.
I am carrying Annie’s painting along a snowy trail.

High-heeled shoes, one pair a silk chartreuse—
I carry Annie’s painting along the whitened path.

Into the second season
of not eating

there was still Time in me, enough
stored hours to keep trekking
to school,