After Dimitra Harvey



In my marriage we argue

over building, offer each other tenders,

bid on chores. I read my friend’s poem

about cicadas, each season of stanzas

carefully kneaded. She is a cook, bakes

cakes so real the sugar flowers could wilt

and you wouldn’t know the petals were fake till

they fell and the ants came. In the poem

she knows the cicadas nest in dirt 18 years.

Everything else is a plant, or statue

spun till it stills. Let me tell you

of how the only clay I make crumbled

broke in the kiln from air, I was only taking classes

to try and find the poem in how I knew I would fail.

This is similar to how I fall apart in prenatal

yoga unable to make my arms and shoulders

in time – hold it. All of this

is to say, I admire the poem that can

tough it out, I am cautious of anything built

to last, what things might lie in soil waiting,

able to exploit any crack to get to air.