print previewback JEN HIRT
Why Not Malachite for Resurrection
When you rent apt. #6 only because
the back steps double as risers for the
still-life parade of pansies and late
hurrah of mums, you grand master of
houseplants, you auteur of potted landscape
and better words like thumbemerald,
victory girl gardener, victory garden girl,
you will come home to find that triumph (of the wrongbreed)
goes to the apt. #5’s unshorn poodle
for bringing his disobedient perm
to the back step jardin, his ratty chinfur
stained with discount kibble and bad
ideas for the potted fern on the top step,
a fern best knocked down and dug out, and
you will note the time of ferndeath
at 4-on-a-Friday, the neighbor a backrent
of apologies, blame of a broken rope.
He likes to digup houseplants we don’t
have any because of him and the unshorn
poodle coughs roots and respect straight
out of his rotting maw, molars black as peat,
stratified with Alpo and cake and and
because there is always one more thing
for a dog like that to destroy.
When you wait 3 days, when emerald is your nailthumbnailed
to the crucifix of urban gardening
and malicious is the bloodtype of poodles unshorn
and untrained, then why not malachite for resurrection,
for the nine fiddleheads better than apostles that
rise in lime ambition (limbition) from the torn
fern dirtball tossed in time lapse to unfurl like a storm
front and 2nd chances and the slow whip of how
you leash and shear in your dreams all that is overgrown,
and for every dandery curled curve
of the dogcoat that falls to the cement
just hope that there is in your future
one dog who is fond of fronds and even
friends with ferns for there will
be other backdoor steps, even a
stoop in the city someday and somewhere
somehow you and that fern will keep
finding triomphe in the coincidence
of victory and the victory of malachite. 
