Clade Song 5

Monsanto, Drunk in the Garden

She whispers to plant life: come up
come up, my sleeping herds of thistle,
my stinging and resolute theocracies,
my unbound glory, my sunning stars,
my stranglehold of monopoly,
Come up. Come up and waddle
through the dirt with me, drink deep
this chlorinated song, sprung
lonely from a nozzle of pure joy where
I find myself most mornings weeping.
Be brave my little florets. Make haste
to catch the light before it’s gone.
Open your petals to science.
Surface the hidden world.
Break blues and purples and reds
in a riot of contradiction. My parrots,
my gentled garden of lambs, my pig parts,
my onions. Come stir on a light breeze
as bees fall to sleep in the crimson afterlife.
We will be wealthy and famous forever.

Melissa Tuckey lives in Ithaca, New York, where she works as a head cook in an eco-village, editor, and writing instructor. She has a background in environmental justice activism and is a co-founder of Split This Rock, a national poetry organization dedicated to poetry of provocation and witness. She's author of two collections of poetry. Tenuous Chapel was selected by Charles Simic for the ABZ Press First Book Award. Rope as Witness, a chapbook was published by Pudding House Press. She's currently at work editing Ghost Fishing: An Eco- Justice Poetry Anthology, forthcoming with University of Georgia Press in 2016.