Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

Pomegranate

your waxed and lumpy skin seemed like a tank
     w/o mortars or missiles
I cdn't die                I cdn't dig my nails into you
          under those immaculate
    groaning               lights
            of Safeway, Albertson's, QFC

you didn't attract me
but I lie

          you did until I got to school
and learned if I ate you I'd go to Hell  (teachers, books)
and learned eating  you was all about sex  (other kids, secret books
                             behind the covered  four-square courts

                   I drank your juice
in pulverized ice & tequila
                                   & something shouldn't have been there
& I knew all about what Hades
did to Persephone—she probably knew him before
but I escape into another world

where you were piled between oranges & mangoes
 carted over dusty sewers
                          and I found my nails sharp enough
and I held the first of your seeds
high to catch the smoggy sun 

there was so little of you
glistening
to eat

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A Fair

     cotton candy scent & teenaged stale beer
     lights come on when we used to leave the fair
     but our parents aren't here
                      half of them are dead
                    which isn't the point
     the lights

begin to move
              too fast to see your face
in the shapes of wheels & screams
                                  & swings
that frightened my mother enough to ban me

               only the moon is unchanged
we'll take the sky
ride over the roller coaster & gravitron
let the fireworks begin

                                          to blur
                                          & smoke
                                          & we're
                                          too old
to

The first time I read through Evie Shockley‘s socially and geographically aware love poem, quiet as it’s kept, I found myself searching for evidence that the description of “these boys” was ironic or for some sort of sinister presence behind their surfaces. This probably says more about my own experiences (up until the past couple years anyway) than it does about the poem, but two specific phrases contributed to this reaction and ultimately provided me with a way to grasp the poem’s non-ironic content.

The first of these is the second part of the first line: “their quiet feminism”. My initial response to this was to wonder what good their feminism was if they didn’t speak out. This is answered later on: the good is in their actions, in their being

the boys who open doors for men
                                                 and
                                                         women

A loud feminist man or boy who doesn’t treat people kindly and equally is just “feminist”.

The second phrase that led me to doubt “these boys” comes in the second line: “in their mothers’ gardens”. I thought of young men sheltered and protected by their mothers, who may even remain good and caring so long as they are in that context, who either cannot handle life without a mother-figure serving their needs or who turn cruel when denied that. The phrase around this one, however, make it clear that this garden is only a starting point:

no one tells you about these boys  :  their quiet feminism
grows like wildflowers  :  in their mothers’ gardens

If your neighbor has ever planted a patch of wildflowers by your well-manicured landscape, then you know that such plants never stay where they begin.

While my initial assumption that there must be irony proved incorrect, there is a sinister presence in the poem. It is not part of boys but, rather, the external world, the winter chill responsible for

oooooooooooooooooothe ice freezing silently
over your private spring

It is the potentially deadly chill of a profoundly anti-feminist—anti-woman—society.

This interpretation is supported by the repetition of “no one tells you”. A society frozen against egalitarian loves isn’t about to tell you about the existence of boys who can engage in such relationships or about how to build these relationships. Relationships that do not fit the social norms require learning a whole new way to be together. It isn’t just that no one does tell you: it’s that no one can.

By contrast, a second repeating element emphasizes the possibility of an egalitarian connection. The colon connects clauses in a way that allows one to elucidate or flow from the other without being subordinated.

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Of all the things Michelle Obama does, you would think her planting a garden would be beyond reproach. Then again, after the kerfuffle about her wearing a sleeveless dress, I guess just about anything is up for critique. This time, a pesicide industry group is attacking her for not using chemicals in her garden.

The “Mid America CropLife Association” (note the trademark style portmanteau) has published and are encouraging their members to send a letter to the First Lady that seems to imply that if we all started to grow plants organically, we would have to dedicate so much time the process that we would be unable to achieve anything in the arts and sciences. Our culture would decline!!! And fall!!! Of course, the last time I had a garden, I was working 45+ hour weeks, writing a poem a day, and occasionally dabbling in prose and photography; that small organic plot produced enough food for two people. No less a poet than John Clare worked in agriculture throughout his life (though I wouldn’t wish his poverty on anyone). Thoreau’s garden at Walden, was (I’m fairly certain) organic.

CREDO has a campaign set up to send letters to MACA criticizing their attack on Michelle Obama’s garden. Personally, I think it makes more sense to contact the White House directly and express support for chemical-free gardening.