National Poetry Month : Roxanna Bennett,

 

Growing Stranger in the Shade

Peat moss softens shady gardens, “nonsense,
     plenty of flowers grow in the shade,” said
Shirley when I was churlish about pretty
     flowers dying beneath the maple’s burgundy
leaves, I wish she’d follow the rules so we
     could see her, Steve misses his mother & she’s
the only other person I leave
     the house with but she’s a social butterfly
& I’m a solitary moth, an orphan bee,
     now that we’re in Phase Three
will the granulomas in my lungs finally
     be set free to kill me then leap from me
to my kid to Steve, or is it a paranoid fantasy,
     inside since February, I mean beneath this tree.

 

 

 

The disabled poem-making entity known as Roxanna Bennett gratefully resides on aboriginal land. They are the author of the award-winning poetry collection Unmeaningable (Gordon Hill Press, 2019) and the forthcoming The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021).