Poetry |

“After a student tells me her allergies are due to botanical sexism, I look it up” & “Summertime”

After a student tells me her allergies are due to botanical sexism, I look it up

 

 

and yes, after the elms all died,

or most of them did, someone decided:

female trees just make a mess —

seeds and fruit and all that juice —

 

so cities began to plant only male trees.

Growers bred new cultivars

avoiding troublesome lady

or hermaphrodite trees;

 

they bred boys, boys, boys all day.

Or else, faster, they cloned them.

 

Cleaner streets without females.

No need for the stench

a girl gingko releases

when she’s in heat. No need

 

for tree babies. Let the wind

clean up the rest.

 

All male trees make is pollen.

Male trees all make pollen.

Male trees: all that pollen,

 

and the wind can’t carry it all,

so it stays in our noses,

eyes, and throats. We wonder,

this year, if it’s pollen

 

or something else. Our eyes

keep watering.

We cry like little girls.

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

Summertime

 

 

Eventually friends said, come

to dinner outside, and eventually

we said yes. S. was five and excited,

and when we reached the front door,

 

turned suddenly, walking straight

away to safety. I went and sat with her

on the ground until we were both

ready. Then it was sunny and new

 

in the backyard, the table was set

so beautifully and K. said work was

nonstop but good and Y. told us how

he had maybe almost died — not of that 

 

but was fine now, and we were relieved

and worried and relieved, and we ate

and asked each other about our best newest

takeout places and nature walks, and L. described

 

her favorite class, and R. played the guitar

and A. let her little sister cling close

and there was a whole vegetable garden

that had grown since the last time we visited,

 

that’s how long it had been: a whole head of

butter lettuce in the ground, leaves green

as any green, rippled like a lush little mountain range

seen from a high overlook, when you stand

 

still for a minute and catch your breath

and take a long drink of cool water, and try

to take a real picture, then a mental one, and then

you keep going, somehow, over the mountain.

 

 

 

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