A Poem
Published Online with Neuro Logical, 2021
You’re standing in the woods in North Carolina.
Everything is sopping-
the air, the timid trees that lean away from you with blushing bark,
the shallow footprints with little oceans all their own.
Your video is brief but charming.
China teeth and pressed plaid,
effortless elegance punctuated by some fitting ad,
some stream of births, successes, and vacations down south.
In some flighty flurry of happy teeth and circumstance,
you’ve offended those woods around you.
The rains don’t care for your sales quota,
nor do the casual lichens, the powerful persimmons,
and stubborn roots.
You didn’t ask them
before casting them in your tired charade
of desperate civility and cotton-clad capital.
And why would you?
They cannot cheer with silent voices,
cannot be jealous with wooden brains and thoughts of songs.
They cannot fall into your human faults,
so far below the sopping soil,
so distant from their honest shade.
Holly Eva Allen 