red spinach

I was made in between
stalks of red spinach

my mother's relatives sent us
the seeds, they got through the
parcel thieves, there's no real
value in potential, can't chew

them like poppy, but we stewed the
leaves when the child was born,
healthy and round, long awaited,

i sung an elegy in the garden,
for the wilted corn, the bitter
cabbage, for the sprayed ants,
red and writhing,

i prayed for the insecticide
leaching into the soil, to
not reach the sunflowers I had
so delicately

put to bed, dreaming of little
yellow heads, sprouting out,

leaves curl and burn, diseased
like memory, this is the price

to pay for sweet red spinach
and healthy boy-children,

pick the ripest from the top,
and let the birds peck the fallen,

the roots are blighted, you can
taste it, acrid, fetid, least of all

& the last to take, summer's
failure, fall's dead-end, bury it lightly,

so that its winter corpse may make
a useful bed for the coming bloom.

fruit basket

Fruit of their bodies,
there fell from heaven a target,
the consummation of his prayer.
Lord knows I've been made for it.

Pacific honey and
date syrup, make you
a black chai, sucking
lemon slices, there's

a basket of pomegranates
for you, my father
grew them, I've only been
somewhat welcome to it,
but enough to give you
what I think you want,

fruit of a barren garden.

There were test results once,
but I've forgotten them,
the cursed object, genomic
myopia, she opened me up
and asked if I had been hurt once,
when I was very small,

as if the forceps weren't
too big, jogging a memory,

You can fashion a woman
from the corpse of a girl.

You can make anything
out of anything,
a square will fit in a
circle as long as you
cut corners,
a child told me that
once, and I thought he
must have had it all figured out.