I plan the demise of tree by Kyle Laws

                        Davide Ciriello CC



I plan the demise of tree                

plan the sculpture it will become along 
the fence line that no matter how much I irrigate 
the roots struggle with the neighbor’s yard 
unfed other than by motor oil and beer spilled 
when the marijuana runs out at parties.

The tree has always drawn complaints--
a branch too low on trash day and leaves fallen 
into a barren swept clean as though a dirt floor.
But weeds keep the basement from flooding
where a teenager is locked on her mother’s bad days.

I remember the fall her father taught her how to toke 
on the back stoop, how to inhale and hold, 
exhale and quit school, only a thread of smoke 
cradling her as it drifted out the window              
into the arms of the tree.      ​

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Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

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