The Carnivorous Plants

1950 –

in exile, ganged up in this greenhouse of living ache
and want, shabby glassed-in room with a door propped open
by a dustpan under a scribbled please, keep locked,
underlined, underlined. Who wrote that, what guardian

of the wordless deep to abet these most patient other
bullies on their bright faded stalks breathing in
my carbon, giving back oxygen, not a gift, only something
to remind: the invisible exchange—love that first.

But trays and trays of dirt growing miniature time bombs,
tiny eyelids with a clamshell look, eyelashes if
brushed even slightly, they go for me. One clamps up
quick as I pull away. I’m its feed me right now,

I’m prey, then a total washout, too big for its wired-up little,
a tease. Slowly it reopens, resumes watch on this ocean
of sunlit muggy air, me swimming through my so important
afternoon to supper, to sleep. What to dream at night—

who knows how ruthless such a small empty creature
crazy to swallow all anything that happens by,
to give it a shot, a next world, a slow dissolve.
I have eyelids. I have eyelashes that shut down tight.

There Ought to Be a Law Against Henry

given his showing up to teach at the U 
disheveled, jittery cigarette and cigarette and probably 
the drink, losing the very way there 
over river, river of all song, all American story 
which starts way north of St. Paul quiet or undone 
wandering south, not 
enraged mostly, something stranger. 
That’s one epic shard of John Berryman anyway.

Notorious.

Marianne Boruch

2018

The First Layer of City

Concerning the lost and so
much of it, the Professor of Antiquities
is on TV again—

Think about that.

I love the word oxymoron like I love the word
hope loving him back such a long way.

The ancients then, via digital pulse. But never
to know except with shovel, brush,
magnifying glass. He dreams out the rest.

The rest is resting in dust. The rest too will

come out of deep down
petrified wood or gold or bronze
fierce, the spear end of it.

Marianne Boruch

2016

Before and Every After

—in memory

Eventually one dreams the real thing.

The cave as it was, what we paid to straddle
one skinny box-turned-seat down the middle, narrow boat
made special for the state park, the wet, the tricky

passing into rock and underground river.

A single row of strangers faced front, each of us
behind another close
as dominoes to fall or we were angels lined up
politely, pre-flight, like that was
a coffin we rode, the go-to, take-out end of it,

Marianne Boruch

2014

Poems

The Carnivorous Plants

More by this poet

There Ought to Be a Law Against Henry

The First Layer of City

Before and Every After

Poems

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The Carnivorous Plants

More by this poet

There Ought to Be a Law Against Henry

The First Layer of City

Before and Every After

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