Garlic
A head of garlic swells
like a hobo’s bundle. Pried open,
it’s equally pungent.
Fresh garlic is good for you
if you crave solitude
and the open road.
Once I wrote a word
on the delicate paper I tore
from a garlic clove, a whimsy
that came out of my pores.
The word is gone, not forgotten,
like the man I lived with then.
Sometimes moderation is
not an option.
He’s always in your bed;
he’s never in your bed.
Garlic is or isn’t in a dish
or sprouting
on the sunny windowsill,
an inch of green ambition
and a stirring
in the severed roots.
Connie Wanek lives in Duluth. She has a new book from Copper Canyon Press coming out in late 2009. She has published two books, Bonfire (New Rivers Press) and Hartley Field (Holy Cow! Press).
