The Garden at Late Season

The hose spat once, then died.
I carried buckets to the thirsty ones, Umma’s tomatoes 
hanging tired on their stakes. Her mint curled in its pot.
At dawn, as porch lights slept, I shoveled 
handfuls of earth until worms surfaced, folded them 
into fresh soil like secrets. A bee landed 
on my wrist, stayed. I let it.
The air hummed the song of a generator somewhere 
down the block, someone fixing what still works.
I pick through the strawberries, half split, half gone
soft. The good ones, I raise to my mouth.
The bad ones, I toss toward the fence, watch
a bird flutter out and never come back. All morning
the shovel waited in the garage, turning soil 
only in its mind. I prefer it this way: turning the soil 
until roots wrist-thick reveal themselves like secrets
we can’t tuck back under our tongues. Will you forgive me 
for what I buried and didn’t say? I pull 
until the roots give and the stench rises: iron 
& rot, something slightly sweet. Behind me, the house 
flickers with awakening light, but I don’t let myself 
look up—I pretend the dark is only dirt, cool and rough
between my fingers. When the wind comes, it takes 
the seed packets, the gloves, the small spade
we lugged through a decade of moves.

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Leonardo Chung is a Korean American writer attending Yale University. He recently won First Place in Poetry in the Los Angeles Review and First Place for Nonfiction in the 93rd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. His work appears in the Los Angeles Review, Epiphany, Chestnut Review, Chautauqua and others. He draws inspiration from distinguished poets such as Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Louise Glück.