Kitchen Table MFA (ALL): Green thumb

This poem is part of the Kitchen Table MFA, a series that showcases writing communities through interviews and creative writing.

I scrape scabs

into scars from the cuts

I gave myself.

I sow them in the damp:

a familiar grit

a place to plant.

I long to be cut down,

sweetness drained from branches.

I hoped for evergreen.

For now I will settle for not dying

beneath the grit.

I can’t see myself

in this foliage anymore.

I refuse to stumble upon myself

cut down on the forest floor,

moss-covered, unforgivable.

Read Nancy Reddy’s interview with ALL here. Also check out the work of other ALL members Steve Tomasko, Marilyn Annucci, and Jesse Lee Kercheval.