sharon kennedy-nolle

“Invasive species

Euonymus Alatus,”
you’d say, snipping
with your pruners the burning bush surrounds,
handy machete chopping
roots that choke the great oaks. 

If you could just be here,
hiking with me
instead of locked up, like your dead brother
once was.

So now you know
the treaded bootie, spooned life,
of lidless toilets, where the rest of the October world
stays sealed off behind buzzed doors, fake balconies.
Dental floss and tin foil, confiscated risks.
“Pens, too,” says the grabby staff
to their clipboard sheet of checked boxes.

Forking it over, smiling haplessly,
your red-rimmed eyes waver
wearily, flashing fuchsia
against the family madness
that fires each of my children’s souls,
its razored touch like this barbed bark,
withering
this attempt to reach you,
now classified as endangered.