Pruning Burning Bushes - Sarah M. Wells

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      to our revolutionaries. This earth

      is ours, its harvest, its rot. This ladder

      has our dirt tucked between the crevices

      of every letter. I reach and reach,

      polish whatever skin I can and trip

      over the broken treads, all repeat

      American, American, American,

      until I reach the peak and slide, hot metal burning.

      Ohio

      I. Against the Ground

      I was wheat-field flat and growing

      into rolling foothills. Somewhere in me

      were illuminated cities waiting for dawn,

      but my factory towns slipped into dusk,

      their single-panes broken against mid-day light.

      I did not see myself deciduous,

      shedding cherry blossoms like wilted promises.

      The spruce with its blush of blue growth

      led me to believe I was evergreen, but even that

      cannot withstand six months of winter salt, of ash.

      Snow melts before it hits the earth

      as rain in a season I pretend is spring

      because the crocus and daffodil return

      and the factories churn out shopping marts

      and parking lots filled with rusted pick-up trucks.

      I wait, perched on my steel I-beam,

      for the college students to come home,

      but it is spring, and the frost returns to kill the buds

      before they’ve bloomed. The Earth turns,

      pushes fieldstones into my hands for harvest

      before the plow restores the hollowed stalks

      of last year’s crop into the dirt. Earthworms

      labor alongside the farmer who toils

      against the ground, ready for the slow shiver

      of crops, slow billow of hope.

      II. Soup of the Day

      I only knew the many ways to cook

      zucchini because there was so much of it

      and I was tired

      of fried, tired of bread, tired of grilled.

      I do not sauté; I sauce, I boil, I butter and boy,

      my boys grow tall.

      But now I am old. Unyielding. I do not produce

      as much food as I used to. My fields are named

      suburban neighborhoods.

      I eat the meat of other states and export

      grain-fed college kids. I do not know

      how to behave

      in this marketplace, how to diversify my menu,

      integrate new ingredients. Entrees remain the same.

      I do not change.

      III. Histories

      I hold my histories

      like apologies,

      named the river Cuyahoga and walk

      a crooked path past Flats

      of abandoned restaurants, wander

      Geauga County trapping

      the raccoon here

      and releasing it there,

      out of sight,

      trace the large creek that meanders

      the southern border, utter Ohio

      and do not know or remember

      the Seneca Indians

      would not have added “river”

      to the end, just Ohio.

      The Pigs

      Dad revived the barn—its siding stripped

      for a neighbor’s cabinets, the grooved tin roof

      rattling in wind on top of rotten trusses—

      he buried sagging basement cow stalls

      with Midwestern clay and silt, poured cement.

      A makeshift pen and pump raised up

      our three weaned piglets. I flung half-eaten cobs

      in their feeder, rubbed wet snouts,

      scratched behind ears, pet stubbled backs.

      They rooted, trotted, rolled, and pissed.

      We named them Buster, Pinky, Red, and watched

      with rested arms on rails for hours.

      They escaped one day—split the hillside,

      squealed and darted through the valley—

      freedom wild in frantic hooves.

      I chased Buster with a stick, the dog leash

      in my hand dragging through new top soil

      in the cul-de-sac. He left prints in bluegrass,

      clicked across asphalt driveways and startled

      Labradors on porches with his sunburned skin,

      until I caught him, walked him home

      past landscaped beds. We corralled the hogs

      into a truck backed up to the barn on Labor Day.

      The concrete floor is clean, a water pump

      drips and rusts. The barn cat slinks between

      some soggy bales of straw. Look through the gaps

      in slats Dad hung. A harvester shredded

      cornstalks here, silage suspended in the air.

      The sun hung long and bright above the trees

      all evening, shadows cast for deer to wander

      undetected through rows, acres of long, unending rows.

      Instructions for the Excavator

       for my father

      When you bury a horse

      for a neighbor, bring the backhoe

      over, dig a trench, tip her in—

      the daughter crying by her mother—

      when you find her stiff in her stall,

      you will have to break her legs

      so she will fit.

      *

      When you dig a basement

      ten feet deep, push away topsoil

      to reach into clay and scrape

      the scoop across a boulder.

      Send your brother in to measure;

      aim the laser, read a quarter-inch

      too shallow. Pound the stone,

      over and over—buckets are strong,

      excavator’s

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