Poetry By Marthine Satris

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Careful Out There

I grow nettles
in my garden, & thistles.
               Their soft pricks
brush & sting but I love
to crush one plant’s leaves &
               grind their green to
                              taste
& to watch the other’s grey bud head
burst into a nest of pink &
                               pollen.
There’s another pot, of marigolds I didn’t
               plant. Maybe a squirrel, 
               maybe just your heart.
I keep them to remind me 
that you’ll come & go & as for me,
               sticking around is what I do, cleaver cleaving.
Marigolds used to taste
               sour to me.
Now I pour hot water over them, make a tea
                to say:
be in the world you’ve got.
Even dry ground can grow.

​


​Marthine Satris is Associate Publisher at Heyday, the nonprofit publisher in Berkeley, CA, and holds a PhD in English from UCSB. Her writing has been published in Ballast Journal, The Georgia Review, Flyway Journal, Zyzzyva, Wild Roof Journal, Recenter Press Poetry Journal, Filter Feeder, and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland and is a frequent contributor to Oakland Review of Books.