Witch Brooms

Witch Brooms

Some of us will not make it, expire singing
the same chord with rattled tongues
but don’t worry, we’ve signed our wills
burned our love letters—

water locust
Texas walnut
chalk maple
pyramid magnolia
two wing silver bell

Rip out their lungs, the tree managers
and climate experts, then like us they cannot
breathe. Grate their fists to pink cardboard
strike a match to their hair.

Tell them to stop salting roads
whole towns of deformed buds
welting and drying off, stunted
branch tips, witch brooms.

We can make up for what is lost
like a waist cincher. Small branches hanging
don’t whittle us
black cape and pointed hat

raise us like your own children
peeling like paper
leaves greened then yellowed
arms reaching to gather sun

 

Poem by Laurel Benjamin

 

Laurel Benjamin holds an MFA from Mills College. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, California Quarterly, Wild Roof Journal, The Midway Review, Mac Queens Quinterly, Poetry and Places, Global Quarantine Museum Pendemics issue, Silver Burch Press, including honorable mention in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Poetry Contest 2017 and 2020, long-listed in Sunspot Literary Journal’s long list, among others. She is affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers. More of her work can be found at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com