Arugula

poem about cruciferous vegetables

Four neurons went up in smoke.

The boy lamented them.
The man marveled at the synapses that remained.

This grey mattered,
phantoms and ash,
from shackling to kindling, 
all up in flames.

I forged a knife in this furnace
to perform vivisections and
arrange my findings on paper.

I stained the desk, the binding, the floor,
my fingers, name, in its unmaking. 

The boy sees rubble.
The man, raw material.

A garnish is by definition
unneeded,
but it would be foolish
to bottleneck the purge,
to dam a river
while the parched 
stand in wait. 

¹art by Pragna Gaddamedi (@prgs.jpeg)

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Poetry Tip of the Day!

A poem about coping. What it takes to get through a day, a week, a month. With no human contact. With too much human contact. With no time to ourselves but too much time to fill. I try to lean into writing when I can, but I struggle with the speed of it. Waiting for the thoughts to reach the page and before they bounce back and I decide against putting them down at all. How to make it all slow down. It’s a poem about keeping up with a runaway hamster wheel. In my life, when I have been best at practicing stillness, writing is easiest. The material flying by is easy to catch. This is an ode to that rubble.

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1. beast