Garden Poem.....Jennifer Carrasco

  Odd Gardens

A lady I know plants all her trees

upside-down. Her austere

nature prefers skeletal roots,

how the tips

 appear to crook their fingers.

Beckon her to come closer.

Another woman scatters plastic flowers,

hot pink and turquoise, like vitamins

 in her planter,

supplements

for her real petunias.

My best friend’s garden is

a  deliberate system

disguised as a riot

of leggy perennials

 and matted wildflowers.

 

 In late summer, she places a sign,

“I have gone to CanCun”

on her apartment door

and  she crawls

inside her garden for a month.

 She brings a ball of grocery twine

to tie together the stems

of certain plants

in particular bunches.

Three semicircular clumps

of variegated dahlias,

gathered by their chins,

form the arch of her front porch.

Eleven tomatoes planted in a circle

are tied at their tops

with gothic windows of bound gladioli

to make her chapel for the arts.

Nasturtiums  are crocheted into tents

for her kitchen and bedroom.

Papyrus shelters her bath.

All August

she peers at the world through a curtain

of petals and bees

while her neighbors monitor

songs wafting out of her zinnias,

mud sculptures heaving

up through her hollyhocks

and the furtive morning delivery

 of pornography

to her calendulas.