and the casket cream white,
done off-white with pink
roses, and her face
in the casket
off-white
with pink lips.
one of those griefs
where the people are quiet,
except for her sister,
once, sobbed like a saw
through the service,
pulling lumber to pieces,
sending birds out of trees,
knocking down toilet seats
in all nearby houses.
I doubt your existence
not your suffering
In your tall houses I have seen you
the site of execution
your electric throne
and lofty stone arches exquisitely formed
echoing your screams
Walking this morning barefoot in the garden
I watched your handiwork
a green bottle fly
resting its metallic halo
on a leaf of my beloved apple tree
The dad plants a garden
in tiny yard in front
of six family
digs up dead rose and forsythia.
In school the kid
gets a box of seeds
to sell for PTA.
The kid don’t know anyone with land
for growing all stuck in apartments.
The dad buys four packs,
marigolds, portulaca,
zinnia, balsam.
The dad finds old bricks
makes a ring in center of garden
to fill with flowers
and all along front border,
tomatoes, cukes, peppers
all fit into little yard.
Comfortable in the cold,
mist tendrils rising
across morning garden,
dew-dampened boots
dry in the rising wind.
Cracking this year’s journal,
I release pleasure to the river.
Behind a dome of December clouds,
the sun struggles.
August Garden Overgrown, ravaged with insects, humming incessant sun, the lot of it buckles, sucks, sags and slumps toward autumn — all bursting, come to fruition, seeking divisions between sex and sex and death — breathing last breaths, heaving its seed toward next season. Stephen Jackson [he/him] lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His […]
Read more "August Garden"September This month cuts its own hair, the trees’ dream of going bald and old roses sport candelabras. The mosses cannot hold on as tightly as they did in June. The forsythia droops like a girl’s braids at the end of the first day of school. Black-eyed Susans flirt over the heads of dead-headed daisies. […]
Read more "September"August It is no easier to escape August than January – late summer lassitude bows the asters, curls the sunflowers just as the blizzard quiets winter. My hammock is my sled hurtling with frogs in first fall of alder leaves, swinging over plums fried on the patio, watching the squirrel choose soft figs over peanuts. […]
Read more "August"The patio It’s Saturday. Easter weekend and I am up early. I am cleaning the greenhouse, bent down with holes in my knees, dragging out spiders from the dark places where my grandfather stored pots and sprouted succulents. on the lawn, you are wearing my shirt and carefully painting a bench and wooden chairs, flaked […]
Read more "The patio"Bones Where I am from, women have broken fingernails that dig in the dirt like badgers, looking for bones. Bones mean yes, a lovely spot for pansies. Plant two there. We scrub our hands before dinner. We get the dead dirt rubbed off our palms like it was bad, what we did in the garden. […]
Read more "Bones"Raspberries in June He asks me to come by, read her some of my garden poems at four o’clock. June sun will be high and hot through the windows in her hospital room. She may sleep. The surgeons opened up her abdomen from stern to pubes and poked through the curves, bends, folds and hiding […]
Read more "Raspberries in June"
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