Alex Ender
We Are Evergreen
I soak the stone with acid streams. The decomposed entertain golden showers enough to not reach up and slaughter me. All these concrete benches, but no outhouses. The stones sparse themselves, but not always in body lengths—some had permissed (I suppose) to be folded in halves, or maybe quartered before extinction. Where the trees sprout divide them even more, their bones growing into bark. And they say the evergreens have no skeletons, but joints fused into wooden balls within the elbow of their branches are there (just look). The wind chimes whisper to rest. The wind chimes well without instrument, weathers saliva out of my mouth—I spit on no one, against my will. I break off an angel head from a child’s grave. Her beheading does not
curse. She haloes from within my pocket, a hard hip lump drummed by my godhand. The groundskeeper says do not remove the flowers, to let them die like we die. I’ve been wilting, sure, but the squirrels won’t gnaw my petals like a petunia blossom, like I want them to. Birds have their own houses. I’d like to give them their own grounds, the squirrels, for when casualty happens by tires or a choking nutshell, they need somewhere to go. Perhaps the tree-circled dumpster, plastic coffin comforts. Drive through (why not?)— monuments to go. The railroads only zone (for now) and bear no name, but they’ll bring slates and slabs eventually and etch fables that will wipe away. Columbine Drive—a bang-bang title