by Allisa Cherry

Send me out into my ruin
where every twig shoots like a pistol
and every branch cuts like a sword.

Free me from chores and let me
maraud the undergrowth
in a swimsuit the color of hard candy.

Sweet and deadly, let the morning glory
strangle the grape arbor
and the ants overrun the clusters.

There was a time I thought I could
pull enough weeds to earn my keep here,
lay enough sandstone or scrub enough floor.

But the praise of labor
is always answered with more labor.
This life doesn’t quit

shoving green growth down my throat.
The fruit trees, bearded with lichen
and bees, deafen me. The pansies

muscle past paving stones
and wreck the paths.
With each minute I tarry

I can hear my father
tabulating what I have cost him.
The space I occupy is borrowed

and will soon close over me.
Left too long,
the bittercress goes to seed.

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Allisa Cherry was born and raised in the rural southwest of the United States. She has since relocated to Portland, OR, where she works as a writing tutor and small-scale urban farmer and has recently completed an MFA in poetry at Pacific University. Her work has received Pushcart Prize nominations from San Pedro River Review and High Desert Journal, and is forthcoming in Westchester Review and Tar River Poetry.