Go Ahead
After "Sparkle" by Franziska Furter (2018)

Nurse your anger and will a garden to seed. Harvest
nothing. Let the whole plot rot with no plans to collect
the pits and pods. Let the allotment crack and empty,

while you watch from the creaky rocking chair that mars
drywall at rails and apex, scratching permanence. Makes
as much sense as purchasing a star that some poet or lover

stares at, happily, unaware of your ownership. In short time,
a breeze will undo your monument, and let fly tufted seeds
that look like sparkler heads all light and show (how

they burn our retinas, leave the opposite of a shadow), drift
through chain link or board fence, far beyond the cul-de-sac
where you sit, to a new spot where someone else sits,

wonders at the gift as it begins to grow, at a seed that holds
no memory, where it came from or the marks in your house.

—Michele Parker Randall

Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books, 2015) and A Future Unmappable, chapbook (Finishing Line Press 2021). Her work has appeared in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, Southampton Review, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Central Florida.