Green Exploitation

30 Day Poetry Challenge: National Poetry Month

for Denise Weuve

Will walks to a neatly sliced section of his friend,

preserved in rectangular display boxes,

perfectly aligned anatomy. He comes

to this wake because he has this gift. He sees

the artist inside the mind that sculpts

and saws corpses, stitches death and mutilation

into mosaics and rock art.

A trophy signs his work. His funeral suit—

a grey chained straight jacket; his hat

a plastic strapped mask face, dripping condensation

from labored breathing. He’s a monster

according to this outfit, being led to a macabre exhibit.

Weak from encephalitis, but not too weak

to have his mastermind molested. He’s the help.

I woke up this morning to green exploitation.

Cardinals pick through last winter seeds

beneath dead leaves pushed aside by grass shoots.

On tree branches, mere twigs barely affixed,

bold red bodies drop their loads

that bury the babies of fescue clumps.

Acrid globules disintegrate with trash

rolled over by tires, shredded by low pressure winds.

Tenderized, they sink down into earth. Rains

mix the mush, roots transmute poisons into food.

The green comes back every year no matter

the coal ash or crude MCMH it grows through.

Its mitochondria scream as chloroplast

swells in a chemical swill.