A HYDRA

But did I have to be so vatic 
about it? The slaughtered 
plants fuck me up 
too, outside my lyric eye 
For the exemplar. 

My preference in this general 
disaster– did I see the absence– 
the mint 
had curled its claws up the walls 

from the house’s foundation, moire 
weed and wildflower all clipped 
to a bristle 
in green. Took time 

to absorb that loss. Love versus 
the fullness of the field– resurgence 
of the question– 

where does cull 
end in cultivate? The scythe 
whirs silently 
above it all, slicing air 

out of my throat, the garden, 
vulnerable in its containment. 
The necessary 
future is any speck in the teeming 
of wildflowers I can’t name.

Tobi Kassim was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and has lived in the United States since 2003. His poems have been published in The Volta, The Brooklyn Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Zocalo Public Square, and elsewhere. His chapbook Dear Sly Stone was published by Spiral Editions. He is an Undocupoets fellow, received a Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and works in New Haven’s Public Library.