Public Republic

Kristin Dimitrova

Photo: Swami Stream

from My Life in Squares (forthcoming from Smokestack Books, 2010)

The weed in the pot gesticulates
like the first and only guest
at a birthday party. The other seeds
never showed up.
Silently they refused to take part
in the fair of transformations –
thesis, antithesis, synthesis;
even their theses remained hidden.
Yesterday I poked the soil around;
they were all gone.
I just found two or three round bodies
clenching their teeth in stiff tenacity,
oval
memories of an opportunity.

The weed signals me to shut up,
it looks hurt.

I don’t know its name, I don’t like it.
It appeared in place of the
unfulfilled flowers.
I water it.