Zachary Bos

Agoraphobia
 
"Strah je uvijek proizlazi iz neznanja."
                        -Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
When the feeling that the earth is turning
too fast to hold fast grows overwhelming,
don't panic: just get yourself out of sight
of all that icebox emptiness of space--
look for a stranger with inviting eyes
and an interrogative kind of face
and ask if there is any extra room
in their heart or head for a refugee
escaping the planet's overexposed,
orange-rind surface. If they open up
don't wonder if you're being rude: just tuck
your elbows in and make like a nut-meat.
You can get to know each other talking
about the madness of mountain-climbing.
 

 
Private
 
One thing no one else will know
is the nimble way we knot
beneath the sheets, and how we
are still bound by a twining
so that if we ever broke
the taut cord by stretching it
with too much force, or across
too great a distance, the ends
would snap back with great violence
to raise an untidy welt
anyone could recognize.
 
 

Extirpation
 
The weeds in candid profusion were there
every damn time I returned on my knees
to the cockeyed garden beds in our yard.
I pulled everything, promiscuously,
until I learned to distinguish purslane
from oregano, sweet flag from violets.
But these differences I learned for myself;
I still might very well be wrong about
all of it. Think of all the flowers I
uprooted in my ignorant roughness,
and how many weeds thrived in the safety
of my unknowing to crowd out even
the flowers I had managed to miss while
pulling out the ones I mistook for weeds. 

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Psychic Meatloaf Poetry Journal