Audio recording of author reading “Leaning Towards Manifesto”
Composting is next to godliness.
– My father
Take your own advice: if Orpheus is in it
or vultures (the impulse there is the same:
skull picked clean by pain, mutilated
song, a dark hour circled, regret baring
poison-jeweled fangs) throw it out. If there
is cooking (like the one about the woman
stirring boiling polenta for two, stunned
by that volcanic hiss and bubble, its promise
that if she abandons attentiveness
the house will burn down) that becomes
a metaphor for love, throw it out. If
it is sentimental, overly lovely, throw it out.
(My guilt glows like the skin of the hornworm,
incandescent, spined, bright as the bolt
of lightning which tunes the horizon
with its silver tines.) But our darlings
are delicate cats with many lives, and I
don’t buy into euthanasia. This is an age
that dies and revives. I know a single garlic
clove will live forever. I salvage and in lieu
of prayer I compost. I buy Ball jars. I root
cellar, I hoard, I shotgun. I’ll bury in the yard.