Plutocracy

I continue on my poetry marathon (30/30) attempt to write a poem-a-day for (almost) 30 days in hopes of raising money for Tupelo Press. I'm using various Words of the Days from a couple of websites, including the New York Times and Dictionary.com as titles or some kind of inspirational point for the poems. Today's NY Times word of the day is Plutocracy. I'm not big on directly political poems, but I suppose all poetry has some sort of political statement no matter what we intend.

plutocracy
(or the garden)

She insists she's not here to metaphor, to lay down, or to disrupt what we already have going. I am interested in the botany, she says. The peonies. The pepper plants with their delicate white flowers. We are most disturbed by her reaction to the heirloom tomato plant, the multicolored fruits that hang like jewels because of nothing in particular we did right. They nearly sparkle. We hope she will touch them, but than again, we don't. We want her to love them, to speculate on what they would sell for at market. We want her to walk away with empty hands, wishing she could take them with her.