Excerpt from upcoming chapbook zine, “I am in the garden, hoping.”

This is from a thing I’m working on. I don’t know what it is yet. I think it might be some kind of epic thing involving Persephone and Lucifer. Or it might just be a bunch of poems about gardening. Haven’t decided yet. Here’s something I wrote that might go in it or might get chucked! Who knows!

I am in the garden, hoping
I am not too far gone, and that
the temperate climate
will allow for a late start.

But I'm new to gardening--
a statement that seems stupid
when you dig your hands
in the dirt
and find yourself
sorting and pulling
with a mindless certainty.
You can almost remember
doing the same, as a child,
but whose garden?
I don't remember a garden.
Only grass and sky and trees and sticks.

And there's the digging--
and always with a purpose,
like you're going somewhere.
I peer into each hole,
to see what treasures are inside,
what civilizations
I'm decimating
with one fell swoop.
I feel guilty at the
rush of power,
But I feel just the same
from pulling weeds.
One hard yank,
and you cease to be.
But my rosebush can
thrive, unstifled,
un-strangled.

You give a vine an inch,
it will take the whole garden.
The bodies of my rosebush's enemies
are swiftly ripped to shreds,
and piled in a pit.
The geraniums, the pear tree--
just beginning to grow in a
hosed out bucket of kitty litter--,
the cala lilies,
the potatoes, the onion, the garlic--
all will have a hearty feast
on their corpses,
and look brighter and fuller for it.

A garden's full of terrible lessons
and powerful magic.

A garden bed's a graveyard, first.
That's lesson number one.

I'm in the garden, hoping,
with every killing I commit,
I will reach toward the light.

I'm in the garden with
my garbage and graves,
hoping to bloom.

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  1. Keep the smut alive! – SmutMag

    […] I am in the garden, hoping […]

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