^{After Robert Minervini’s “Improvised Garden II (Water Street)”}

more and more of my friends
are becoming parents or partners
to plants

i have lived long and short enough
to remember the homegirls who
danced non-stop until three a.m.
the moon a parabola to our party
i’ve grown up enough
to see them sing their favorite slow songs
to herbs and succulents on their windowsills
in homes they sowed from dreams

the same sister who once dug a heel into
a man’s oblique now steals thyme with me
off of suburban bushes after brunch
in my neighborhood

when a friend locked herself out—
the same person who loses wallets &
laptop chargers & saves my broken earrings
with a hot-glue gun in her backpack—
this pinay macguyver
has me breaking into her house at night
where we be tiptoeing over her
forest of planted avocado jars
into her dark room to find warmth

the one whose living room and bedroom
once resembled a flea market  
or a super fly thrift store
and sometimes ikea—
the one who let me stay
she pays full price for potters &
vases—pronounced with the short
& therefore expensive ‘a’ sound

one womxn named her garden
“grown and sexy”
bringing new meaning
to the phrase garden hoe.

another who tops burritos with
white sauce dots like queen anne’s lace
also commits the crime of eating
one half at a time, you know, meal planning
with a sweet tooth, she drinks all of her horchata
& knows how
my family loves orchids &
she brings me them for my birthday
or any other tuesday
just because.

my mentee once congratulated me with
mint & basil & lavender & rosemary—
sweet aromas gifted when i
was leaving a job that left me to rot
for another that was not  an office
with no windows, no green

the women in my life reroot
over oceans & provinces & planes to cultivate
a geography of trunks & limbs
reminding me that to decompose
is the chance to live again

my mother’s rose bushes open wide this spring
in her backyard without her
my mother’s body is buried in a plot
of other bodies without mine
isn’t a cemetery a garden
of all we’ve loved?

and isn’t a garden full
of already dead things?
those who bury their beloved
put the gentlest parts
of themselves into soil
my mother is a seed
    the first woman i cannot unplant
       cannot pull or twist back into my hands
her orchids bloom reaching
how delicately the petals hang off
their stakes like gold, glass bangles on wrists
against disco lights   against the ambiance of a food truck menu
like lip gloss    how bougainvillea spill onto sidewalks
like how the sun stays lit
during an eclipse

the flowers in my garden grow lively
& loving & hungry from pods & cinderblocks
my friends are florists
they water & cry & bloom & sleep
from loss & clay & unfolded laundry
sometimes we grow tired & tough
sometimes you have to open a cactus   to cut
pieces off so we don’t grow stuck

arranging the flowers
in my garden
is a lattice
a life lesson
on how
to grow
up.

Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,
my share of your ashes. Let me not squander
them. Your family blindsided me with this gift.
We want to honor your bond they said at the end
of your service, which took place, as you'd
arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,
an old two-story boathouse made of dark
wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black
leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats.
Both your husbands showed up and got along.
And of course your impossibly handsome son.
After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials,
your family left to toss their share of you
onto the ocean, along with some flowers.

You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing
with in sixth grade during zero-sleep
sleepovers. You were the pretty one.
In middle school I lived on diet Coke and
your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this
telling of our story your father never hits
you or calls you a whore. Always gentle
with me, he taught me to ride a bike after
everyone said I was too klutzy to learn.
In this version we're not afraid of our bodies.
In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain,
and never fails. You still dive under a stall
divider in a restroom at the beach to free me
after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still
reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You
still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends
as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you
safely out of the stadium when you start yelling
that the football looks amazing as it shatters
into a million shimmering pieces, as you
loudly admit that you just dropped acid.

We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished.
I can't snort you, or dump you out over my head,
coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon
character who's just blown herself up, yet remains
unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version,
I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good
journey? I'm still lagging behind, barking up all
the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far
in advance of what the occasion demands. As I
drive home from your memorial, you fizz in
my head like a distant radio station. What
can I do to bridge this chasm between us?
In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive
uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie
open with my teeth and release you at 85
miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.

It’s funny how things come in
circles.
You, sitting on a step,
smoking a cigarette,
watching leaves fall off a
slowly stripping tree.
Me, hanging photos on a wall,
including one of you
receiving, like a priestess,
your lover’s confession.
Me telling stories of
your conversations.
You, weeping
when your dad asked you
how you were.
Me writing poems about life
while I was slowly plunging into
death.
You breathing in those
same lines,
sitting on a step,
smoking a cigarette.

For Amy Lowell

We walked through garden closes
Languidly, with dragging Sunday feet,
And passed down a long pleached alley,
And could remember, as one remembers in a fairy tale,
Ladies in brocade, and lovers, and musk.
We surprised tall dahlias
That shrugged and turned scarlet faces to the breeze.

Further still we sauntered under old trees that bended with such a dignity
But hardly acknowledged our passing
Until at last—(and it was like a gift,
A treasure lifted from a dream of the past)
We came to a pond banded in lindens.

The bank curved under its crown of forget-me-nots;
They shone like blue jewels from the further shore.
And they were free! I could have had them all
To gather and to carry in my arms!
But I took only a few,
Seven blue gems,
To set in the gold of my memory. 

One Sister have I in our house -	
And one a hedge away.	
There's only one recorded,	
But both belong to me.	
  
One came the way that I came -	        
And wore my past year's gown -	
The other as a bird her nest,	
Builded our hearts among.	
  
She did not sing as we did -	
It was a different tune	-     
Herself to her a Music	
As Bumble-bee of June.	
  
Today is far from Childhood -
But up and down the hills	
I held her hand the tighter -	        
Which shortened all the miles -	
  
And still her hum 
The years among,	
Deceives the Butterfly;	
Still in her Eye 
The Violets lie	
Mouldered this many May.	        
  
I spilt the dew -
But took the morn, -	
I chose this single star	
From out the wide night's numbers -	
Sue - forevermore!

          which do you love more
a feather or a rock

                                                     to be good is to be ‘natural’
                                                              I mean to appear

              you are not good
you are holding up though

                                                              you are holding up
                                                     you are getting a drink of water

                    you are eating
          you are concealing your identities

                                                     this is like a riotous wilderness
                                                              but more like a persistent dread

                              your ferocity, almost mycological

                                           mythological

                    I said mycological

                                                     oh god

	                    oh my god
                                         
                                                     your laughter has undertones
                                                                      of oak and berries
and martial law
            conceived, as it were, in a garden

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

^{for Maya}

We meet at a coffee shop. So much time has passed and who is time? Who is waiting by the windowsill? We make plans to go to a museum but we go to a bookshop instead. We’re leaning in, learning how to talk to each other again. I say, I’m obsessed with my grief and she says, I’m always in mourning. She laughs and it’s an extension of her body. She laughs and it moves the whole room. I say, My home is an extension of my body and she says, Most days are better with a long walk. The world moves without us—so we tend to a garden, a graveyard, a pot on the windowsill. Death is a comfort because it says, Transform but don’t hurry. There is a tenderness to growing older and we are listening for it. Steadier ways to move through the world and we are learning them. A way to touch your own body. A touch that says, Dig deeper. There, in the ground, there is our memory. I am near enough my roots. Time is my friend. Tomorrow is a place we are together.