As an editor of a poetry magazine, I have read thousands of poems in my nineteen years on the job, and not all of them are worth even the time it takes to read them. But then, there are these. These are the poems that changed my days, my ways, my life, or my mind.

3.15.2012

Planting (for Kaya) by Rebecca Schumejda

As your father pushes soil over seeds,
you dig them back up.

“No,” leads to a tantrum
on top of where the summer squash will grow.

Since your father knows how much
of who we are gets planted early;

he wraps explanations
around your trembling body.

In the background, I attack weeds
suffocating roses,

the way I suspect my mother would have
under similar circumstances.




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[first read in nibble number eight]

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