DS Maolalaí has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press, with Sad Havoc Among the Birds forthcoming from Turas Press in 2019.
Vineyards.
grapes grow best
on bad ground
in good weather
where they have to take nutrition
straight
out of sunlight. fruit
swells, falls sometimes
on rocks. gets stamped in sheds
and rotten
to deliciousness. the black scars of broken trees
sown in lines
and hot dust – like a man
with thinning hair
who thinks it looks best
when it’s combed
while soaking.
~
The clay.
and down the river
an old car had collapsed itself,
in red rust
like lasagna burned
just right.
we never learned
how it got there – perhaps
someone had died
in a crash –
but were forbidden
from playing in it
anyway – rust
and the danger
of tetanus
too great in our mother’s
eyes. we went near though,
all the same,
and the clay
of the riverbank was perfect. wet cement
which solidified
easily
in our childish attempts
at art. one year
some swallows
build a next in the headlamp,
protected by running water
and the slow breaking
of steel.
we were told again
to stay away,
and this time
we did.
the next year
there were more birds
than grass-stems.
~
The fern.
these are days;
people
with nothing to do
doing
nothing. people
with things
to do
doing
those things. the sun
out, loud and shining,
like a child
screaming at a dropped ice-cream, but weak enough
to freeze you
in a shadow. people sometimes
in houses
touching their hands
against the clock. staring at computers.
or older, looking at ferns
which die on the windowledge. what life
is in a dying fern? a metaphor
for the rest of us? or perhaps
the last leaf
is just a marker
for when once you tidied
up.