What We See


For an exercise in writing class, 
the teacher asked two friends 
to come, then stage a fight, 
working up from slights 
to fisticuffs and rage. 

The students, taking it 
as real, sat numb, 
until one man pushed 
the other from the room. 

The startled class was told  
to write down all they’d heard 
and seen. Their writings were
vague shadow shows on a screen.

I once read a poem 
to my sister and brother – 
a biting poem about our father. 
“That’s not the man I knew!”
my sister sobbed. “That’s him,
all right,” my brother grinned.





Cultivation


The poor beets didn’t have a chance. 
Neither did my gentle bean and pepper plants. 
Collards and tomatoes grew above 
the creeping green potato vines that overtook
the space I thought I’d parceled fairly.

I’m at a loss with vegetable aggression. 
Faint-hearted, I will watch this progression, 
learn to eat a sweet potato pie, give many yams 
away. Winter will kill the garden anyway, 
and I will turn to poetry, coward that I am.