David Cazden

YOUR ORGANIC GARDEN

Late at night you drown
earwigs off the daisies,
holding them with tweezers
underwater.
Anything that won't pinch back
gets crushed, buried in a glass.

Like fingers of the moon
you reach beneath the dill,
the eggplant and the spinach leaves --
soft, broad folds flat against the ground
like hats of plantation owner's wives.
In a humble garden,
you're no sinister than any other

woman with a flashlight, or a jar of drifiting wings.
One afternoon we watch
a purple swallowtail hatch:
its velvet wings vibrate
wet from the cocoon
crawling up the vine,
like a plant toward sun, as you bend
back all the stems
just to reach the air.

Location: Lexington, Kentucky Email: ratts@iglou.com Publications: Poems Neiderngasse, Wind, Rattle, etc. Literary Awards: Danzler Award From the University Of Kentucky for Undergraduate poetry

Goodbyes of Chalk Your Organic Garden Point of Entry Downtown Litmus -- Ballad of a Thin Cigarette this is a poem Evening Beginning The End An Old Japanese Poet Of This World For Friends Missing in Action Suicide The Cameo old man with a fly

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