to the neighbor who keeps watering my tomato plant
I am trying to let it die. We are moving in a few weeks
and I know I will forget to water it, to re-home it in the soil
of our new yard. I figured I’d let it shrivel now, and have one less thing
to haul up into the musty truck, one less item to cross off my packing list
and one less strain on arm, back. But every few days I catch a glimpse
of you from my living room window, bent over the small plant as if scolding
a young child, urging it to grow. You pick up the pollen-dusted watering can
left on its side under a bike wheel, take it into your apartment to fill it.
At first I felt violated, annoyed even, at your taking of my can,
your spontaneous husbandry of my plant, for I truly felt my neglect
was some kind of mercy and sense, and I know nothing about you except
that each morning I step over your minefield of empty beer cans
on our shared front porch, and I sometimes hear you scream
at the woman you live with from across the street when she locks
you out. But I see now, I see the way that you polish your motorcycle
for hours in the sparse yard, the way you wave at my dog when we pass
on our way out the door. When did I become a person who prematurely
ends things? God knows there’s beauty and purpose in quiet rot, in succumbing.
and I know I will forget to water it, to re-home it in the soil
of our new yard. I figured I’d let it shrivel now, and have one less thing
to haul up into the musty truck, one less item to cross off my packing list
and one less strain on arm, back. But every few days I catch a glimpse
of you from my living room window, bent over the small plant as if scolding
a young child, urging it to grow. You pick up the pollen-dusted watering can
left on its side under a bike wheel, take it into your apartment to fill it.
At first I felt violated, annoyed even, at your taking of my can,
your spontaneous husbandry of my plant, for I truly felt my neglect
was some kind of mercy and sense, and I know nothing about you except
that each morning I step over your minefield of empty beer cans
on our shared front porch, and I sometimes hear you scream
at the woman you live with from across the street when she locks
you out. But I see now, I see the way that you polish your motorcycle
for hours in the sparse yard, the way you wave at my dog when we pass
on our way out the door. When did I become a person who prematurely
ends things? God knows there’s beauty and purpose in quiet rot, in succumbing.
Xiaofu Wang. A Vertical History, 2018. Acrylic and colored pencil on found note, 11x8.5 inches.
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Amanda Williams holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and her chapbook, Little Human Relics, was published in May 2016 by Unsolicited Press. She is the recipient of a Jackson Fellowship and a Teaching Fellowship from Hollins University, as well as the Gertrude Claytor Prize in Poetry from the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have been published in The American Journal of Poetry, on Poets.org, in Sugar House Review, Sycamore Review, PoetryFix, Silver Birch Press, and others. Her essays have appeared in AAAA Magazine and The Morning News.
Xiaofu Wang, born in Wuhan, China, works and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from China Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing (2013) and earned her MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in the LeRoy E Hoffberger School of Painting (2017). Xiaofu is currently a 2018-19 fellow for the fully-funded fellowship Shandaken Paint School in New York City. She has shown her work in New York, Baltimore, Colorado, and Beijing. In 2018, Xiaofu’s work was featured in ArtMaze Magazine and Magazine Parcours. She was awarded residencies at Elsewhere Studio Residency and Art Farm Nebraska.