VICTORIA CHANG

Salvinia Molesta

—Known as the world’s worst weed, it lives in water and doubles
its numbers every two days. In two months, its ferns can number
67 million. It reproduces easily, not by spores, but by the spreading
of plant fragments that break off when disturbed.

How far will they swim, grappling outward for more?
Their coils climb upward too, into chains,

and downward underwater, their filamentous fronds twist
in egg-shaped sporocarps.

Miles and miles of them diving and driving.

Eventually, they block sunlight from everything below
and fish burn in hunger and scum.

I often watched Frank Quattrone through the glass
in his office, he liked speakerphone—

talked to walls, his desk, wisterias and wild asters outside.
His striped shirt with the good

seams, always pressed. Sometimes he picked up the putter
while talking. What patience

he had putting the pocked ball into the machine over and over.
I wanted a blue shirt.

I wanted objects but not their shadows. I wanted a house
with a field of lawn, blades

and weeds growing in all directions. What if what had
happened could happen again? 

   Contributor’s notes
   Girdling
   Two Trains

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