Breadcrumb #636

LAUREN FIELDS

It is no accident that strange
fruit grew on our trees, no
invasive species shipped
unknowingly, disrupting the natural
order. In this calculated ecosystem,

we are never far from gravesites
with appellations we don’t know,
buried beneath strip malls
and cities as if
they were meant to be soil
for someone else’s garden.

Man wanted and decided this –
this wash-clean land
that coaxes you to forget,
if you want,
that it ever had a name
that wasn’t stabbed into it,
deep as flagpoles.

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