Lisa Hase-Jackson

Tipton Poetry Journal – Summer 2021

Preservation

Lisa Hase-Jackson

Drive the tractor. Your husband guides the plow. His stubbornness will require alcohol well before noon.

The day must be dry, the earth warm the stakes high – made from straight twigs flagged with strips of cloth, old flannel

will do. Furrow straight as can be managed, no matter the barrage, and as true as good seed scattered

on warm soil. Remember to stagger plantings, water well from the house spigot, and pray for rain and a straight back. Pray the neighbors

don’t spray herbicide on the pasture across the road on a day when the wind is from the east, that wildlife and livestock won’t pilfer, that there are no more frosty mornings.

When luck becomes blooms becomes beans to be picked on a dry day in August and placed on ice until ready for the water-bath canner

sort the Mason jars and the Kerr jars, often used for moonshine, and boil. Blanch the beans, blanch the lids, pack the jars and place them under pressure

on the kitchen stove after shooing away the children but before your husband returns home from work, demanding dinner, quiet, and a can of beer.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Summer 2021

Planting Season

Lisa Hase-Jackson

Harney soil sustains early green beans sweat peas, tomatoes, too; hides seed potatoes, carrot seeds, radishes and grubs.

Black and warm from the sun's May rays, loam collects under nails, tracing the palm's life line.

Will it nourish this over-ample garden, and the children, too? Can it fill the gaps between dreams and addiction, stifle old screams or call me back to root as I roam and wander afield?

Lisa Hase-Jackson lives in Charleston, South Carolina and is the author of Flint and Fire (The Word Works), winner of the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series as selected by Jericho Brown. She is Editor in Chief at South 85 Journal and founding editor of Zingara Poetry Review.