Gretchen's Garden

[se...@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

Gretchen's Garden

This is the fountainous gurgle beyond bushes trimmed into walls
that evokes the frothy pissing of titans,

is the primordial curl of a lip at the organic pandering of the
gardenkeeper no the garden herself
my seething cradle, my humid shame,

is my mute rival in the cramping shrugs that shear us from a
forged birthright, a shelter found in

fatigue of antennae stillborn on a terrace of specious minerals,

This is the dirt I don't wash off,

is gnawing newborn turnips, a filthy ass,
my father teaching me to make music with grass,

is a tree shimmering in the carcasses of its honeysuckle heritage,
one gaunt parallel from its paisano crippled in a candied carpark,

This is the mile-shadow of cloud across the small of the
sorghum field's back,

is a quixotic horse eating the crops,

is a dandy among roughs, in pale alabasters dripping days,
a name's contours smothering of a haymow,

This is the verdant cushioned grammar of useless intelligentsia
breakfasting on vodka and mosquitoes,

This is the dirt I can't wash off,

is a smell of pines straight out of the first dank grottoes,
is the tobacco's beefy salute

This is gorkys and gethsemanes and jersey medians,

Gretchen, and this is you saying
out, come out
like your mothers screamed you to.

Seth. 1993

(anyone else have garden poems?)