Garlic Bed

Wendy Mnookin

 

His arms are wrapped
around me, his knees
folded into mine

when he says she tried
to kiss me but I said no
and I’m thinking

yeah, yeah in my dream

a voice keeps mewing
wake up! but I don’t
want to, I want

to see where this goes
who was it anyway
who tried to kiss him

tried to turn him, turn

the garden soil
in my dream of thirty
cloves, cover them

with hay to keep them
from freezing and thawing
and freezing again, daisy

petals hard to pull one

by one in my dream
she’s still trying
or is the she

me, who knows
what will appear, pungent
and promising,

shoots, scapes, open eyes.

 

 

Wendy Mnookin‘s books are The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, What He Took, To Get Here, and Guenever Speaks. She is the recipient of a Sheila Motton Book Award and an NEA Fellowship, and she teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit writing program in Boston. You can find out more about her work at wendymnookin.com.

 

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