A Monstrous Catalpa Tree Grows from a Drain

You say your sunflowers are fifteen feet tall? 
This Catalpa is thirty feet, higher than the house. 
Soon the burdock and bitter dock will bury us in green. 
Our city feeds on jungle leaves the size of elephant ears.

The Catalpa pods hang, enormous dangling beans.

The Catalpa Tree does not enrich, nor does 
the monstrous burdock, be it bitter or curled. 
We laughed at how the Catalpa eats men and cats.
How its cheap matter foams at dusk to harden overnight. 

The Catalpa feeds on wormseed oil and nightshade flower-shine. 

The Catalpa Tree’s leaves smother and its dagger-beans stab. 
Hundreds of pods hang in clumps over our heads.
Not to notice is worrisome, as one man moved once into the green 
through a side door, his skull pierced 
as he entered the Catalpa’s spacious mansion
of enormous rooms, some spired and domed, some
small and smoky like cities across an oily river.

You will find platforms where one can view new stars.

If you climb high, you can hear the long wind 
since each is a stream pulled from one overarching wind.
The Catalpa Tree sprawls through the grate,
growing overnight, from sidewalk to sun tower.
Picked, the beans turn black, as the tree’s leaves shrink to pea green, 
the pallor of the ripe stiff putrefying by the chain-link.