by Stefanie Wortman
My tomatoes don’t grow, or they grow
too big, black starbursts spreading
over the stem ends. With yellow-
stained hands, I brush off the ants
that patrol the edge of an oozing split.
As we spread out straw mulch, my brother
warns me of the things he’s found baled up
before: dead mice and snake heads cut
by the combine. He found the deer skull
too, when we were kids. We knocked
the dirt off and stuck it on a post
along our favorite path to a trio of rocks,
a tiny waterfall. We drank fistfuls
scooped up between the skating bugs,
swished the muddy river in our teeth.
Whatever may have died upstream rolled
through us equally. The bird carcass he turns
up now is hollow needles tucked in vellum,
tissues broken down. Nitrogen and phosphate
for the soil, bonemeal and bloodmeal.
*Photo courtesy Jose Zaragoza.