Garlic Bed
Wendy Mnookin
His arms are wrapped
around me, his knees
folded into mine
when he says she tried
to kiss me but I said no
and I’m thinking
yeah, yeah in my dream
a voice keeps mewing
wake up! but I don’t
want to, I want
to see where this goes
who was it anyway
who tried to kiss him
tried to turn him, turn
the garden soil
in my dream of thirty
cloves, cover them
with hay to keep them
from freezing and thawing
and freezing again, daisy
petals hard to pull one
by one in my dream
she’s still trying
or is the she
me, who knows
what will appear, pungent
and promising,
shoots, scapes, open eyes.
Wendy Mnookin‘s books are The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, What He Took, To Get Here, and Guenever Speaks. She is the recipient of a Sheila Motton Book Award and an NEA Fellowship, and she teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street, a non-profit writing program in Boston. You can find out more about her work at wendymnookin.com.
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