Over the summer while processing and participating in the Black Lives Matter protests and the police and Tr*mp-ian reactions to them, I found in my backyard a vine that had so deeply rooted itself that it had split into several different vines, each the thickness of a baseball bat.

These vines overtook trees that were thriving and had already killed multiple branches off by the time I had realized what was happening. The vine made me consider how things like prejudice and racism invisibly grown in the background of policies rooted in evil and eventually become the institutions themselves.

——

Invasive Species

The genius of the vine 

is patience.

 

Like colonialism,

or the police,

vines pillage silently

then violently.

 

Invisibly arriving,

sprouting shoots

tracing the earth,

and anchoring

tendrils to trunks.

 

What might have begun 

as a neighborly invitation to dinner

becomes a plundering.

The vine equivalent 

of a one-night-stand

that “forgot” to pull out.

 

Over months 

the guest,

overtakes its host

with order and intention. 

Mingling

in cedar canopies,

borrowing your car 

and returning on E,

leaving you with a pregnancy

you're unable to terminate. 

 

Those same vines that

once elevated 

your pretentious trellis,

giving you security and pomp,

are now shaking down

once vibrant organisms,

kneeling on carotids

whispering 

“stop talking, 

stop yelling, 

it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen 

to talk.”