Born in a playground of sour cherry and bramble,
thumb the rusted neck of a bicycle. Sweat
on upper lips, fingers pluck one leaf just to taste
the green because the honeysuckle bush is Mississippi
wilted, like poke sallet—boiled, salted long
beyond death.
It’s just a weed. Dandelion seeds swing through a nuisance
of humidity and wasp breath. Cornbread darkens
in the cast iron inside.
Yellow flowers sweat into ice water
on the kitchen table, torn stems like splinters
from the barn wood. Horseflies for the horses, saltlick
for the horses. No milk cows, but
carpenter bees. No characters, just weeds and
archetypes named grandmother, who say the bees
don’t sting in July. Every stock
child believes. Like a hymn. Like the hymnal, soured
pages from a decade of cloudless summer. Sweet gum, bare
foot, a pulse quickens and a heel opens
to the dirt. Blood runs
like oil, reddens and stales. Bread with no butter
but buttermilk. Yellow flowers called
weeds. O, sparrow grass.
O, buttercup or daffodil or
paperwhite? Please fill some color into Sunday dinner,
when the oven, unwanted sun, radiates filled
bellies
onto the porch. Tin roof divides noon-light
into a million glints in the eye of every
horse chewing on a clutch of buttercups. The pattern
ends: you collect the eggs, you slice
heat straight through a chicken neck. How funny
that it runs around, almost alive, begging
to be broken and fried.
thumb the rusted neck of a bicycle. Sweat
on upper lips, fingers pluck one leaf just to taste
the green because the honeysuckle bush is Mississippi
wilted, like poke sallet—boiled, salted long
beyond death.
It’s just a weed. Dandelion seeds swing through a nuisance
of humidity and wasp breath. Cornbread darkens
in the cast iron inside.
Yellow flowers sweat into ice water
on the kitchen table, torn stems like splinters
from the barn wood. Horseflies for the horses, saltlick
for the horses. No milk cows, but
carpenter bees. No characters, just weeds and
archetypes named grandmother, who say the bees
don’t sting in July. Every stock
child believes. Like a hymn. Like the hymnal, soured
pages from a decade of cloudless summer. Sweet gum, bare
foot, a pulse quickens and a heel opens
to the dirt. Blood runs
like oil, reddens and stales. Bread with no butter
but buttermilk. Yellow flowers called
weeds. O, sparrow grass.
O, buttercup or daffodil or
paperwhite? Please fill some color into Sunday dinner,
when the oven, unwanted sun, radiates filled
bellies
onto the porch. Tin roof divides noon-light
into a million glints in the eye of every
horse chewing on a clutch of buttercups. The pattern
ends: you collect the eggs, you slice
heat straight through a chicken neck. How funny
that it runs around, almost alive, begging
to be broken and fried.
Heath Joseph Wooten is a 2020 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets fellow, and he holds a BA in English from the University of Mississippi. This fall, he will begin his MFA at Northern Michigan University. His poetry has previously appeared in Adroit and is forthcoming in Dishsoap Quarterly. Instagram: @fake2003blond; Twitter: @edgy2003blond.