No more of the slicing, whiting and yolking;
let’s sweep the counter, here to, there fro—
bleach it, soap it, give it a soaking,
washing and scrubbing, still tick and red glow.
What we’re to feed on we cannot know:
we don’t see bees or the bee man’s hive;
stinkbug caterpillar earwig widow—
what of the milk, of the plants where we live?
Mountaintop stripping, deep well and fracking;
company experts say what to know.
Cracks, faultlines, upthrusts and quaking—
down on the water put factory low,
domes and reactors just where they go.
Quest for power the land has engyved;
moths black ants, trapdoor and sow—
what are these plants doing just where we live?
Crocus and hyacinth sprightly up poking,
yet cherry bud frost-nipped, lettuce no show.
April is wakened, springtime is broken,
pendulum swinging, we’re to suppose—
but July comes around and aphids the rose.
We’re bound to the land, we cannot leave;
thrip roach slug borer—
show me the plants here where we live.
Ground weed dispersion, less forage for cow;
market illusion, colander, sieve;
locust and cutworm reap what you sow—
what gives with the plants near where we live?
—
W.P. Osborn’s Seven Tales and Seven Stories won the 2013 Unboxed Books Fiction Prize, selected by Francine Prose. He has short fiction in After Coetzee: an Anthology of Animal Fictions, and in journals such as Clockhouse, Fiction International, Gettysburg Review, and Mississippi Review. His poems appear in Poems in the Aftermath: An Anthology from the 2016 Presidential Transition Period, Hotel Amerika, Hamilton Stone Review, and San Pedro River Review. Recent nonfiction in MQR Online and Southern Humanities Review.
