March Poet Jan Wiezorek

Harvest

It occurs in air

hedge-pimply.

Syrup runs

turbanesque.

His palm picks

skin and feels

tough and dark

dripping down

to lick teeth,

pleasing green

into mouths.

I do nothing.

He paints sides

of barns, wagons—

children taste

the heft. Uphill

his aroma attracts.

Tell all who travel

vineyards that

his stripes co-

create glory-scent.

Crown china doll

iridescent Cinderella

in red-orange pomp.

This bunch smells

of storybook.

Stimulation

I’ve learned to sit

by the deer path

and watch lovers

who want

to be invisible

lie on backpacks,

fully shy,

become sticky

as clammy hands

that hide

in the fern

garden.

Every day I walk by

the vine stems.

I take a leaf

and dry it,

turning timidity

to marshmallow,

spidering what’s

sticky. Call

it clematis.

Why did

you think

you weren’t seen?

Green

breaks open

secrets,

and we

turn

the pages.

Toe Tapping

I didn’t feel ground

and wind between toes.

But they are what

we remember,

spreading out to baptize

grass. This is where

Uncle Hank lost

his, calling out

green for help

from weeds. We

manage to move

and refuse to look.

I’ve done that,

the woman said,

searching for lost

crown, feeling for teeth

under foot, while mother

worries over arm

fat, gesturing enigmas,

walking yards,

and carrying what’s lost.

This doesn’t mean

what it might.

Passersby hold us

meaningless

with their

wide-

toed-ness.

Crinoids

Meeting him here

by chance,

he told me

he finds them

along the sands:

beads fossilized

into matte rounds,

with a circle inside.

These crosscut sections

of long-dead stems

resurrect themselves

in lake water,

with luminosity, becoming

the oldest things

I will touch today.

Petrified discs

where a sea lily sprouted

and a potter’s spirit grew,

spinning them bony.

Water fed their white eyes

in the center. I look back

to see what he has found.

But sunlight makes

his shape divine

like grit of godhead,

root of eye.

Jan Wiezorek writes from forests, lakes, and gardens in southwestern Michigan. His poetry has appeared in The London Magazine, Minetta Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Broad River Review, Flint Hills Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Caesura Online, among others. He wrote Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011) and taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago.