“Having just emerged from her tv and ac,/she was too sun-shocked and asphyxiating/to hear ‘it’s a lovely shoot’/as my spade severed the root.”
The leaves
appear as edible as mustard,
or the sunbursts
which make “rocket weed”
more logical—
because the sun is where
I would aim my rocket.
The hag,
her head where her breasts should be,
wheezed, “Don’t forget that one,”
pointing
at the world’s last scrap of proof
that some plant brain
had centuries ago known
the need for a cluster
of yellow explosions on a green stem.
Having just emerged from her tv and ac,
she was too sun-shocked and asphyxiating
to hear “it’s a lovely shoot”
as my spade severed the root.
Grant Vecera teaches writing, literature, and thinking at Butler University and at Indiana University Indianapolis, where he lives with his lovely wife, daughter, bicycle, and two cats. His poems have been appearing in various illustrious literary periodicals on and off again for about 30 years.
