Diamond Forde's "Poem in Which I Should Write About Cain, but I’m Tired of Writing About Death" Explores New Themes

O instead, a houseplant arching a trellis of its own strong stems, elephant ear, Colocasia, what my Aunt Cee called Alice, ready for the sure mothering of her own mother. She tended Alice with the surgical heed of a woman seaming silver to the sharp ends of the moon, & even when she yelled at us for crawling through the jungle-mess of Alice’s large leaves, when we scattered soil so far she’d find perlite wedged inside the treadmill, sometimes she’d still let me water or cull the gilded curls of a dead sprout hung like a wrung-out washcloth, & in my hands, I think she saw a potential to dig, to muck deep into the manure of my imagination, to sprout offshoots I’ll plant in someone else someday, when I am not afraid to think of myself as a god large enough that every heart-shaped leaf dicing light to dust could beat in my own chest, & I’ve never made a life, but I’ve reached into the refuse they make of us, found hearts hardy as crocus bulbs, & in this poem I will plant a world for women where kudzu climbs & is wanted. __________________________________