The Age of Greenhouses

Anne-Adele Wight

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

The Age of Greenhouses

by Anne-Adele Wight
Copyright 2016
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Anne-Adele Wight
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-239-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015957476
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks to Debrah Morkun for reading the manuscript and to
Julie Levitt for reading sudden clusters of poems out of sequence. My love
and thanks to Ed Braun for reading every poem as I brandished it under his
nose. Special thanks to Travis Cebula for introducing me to Krampus. Once
again, thanks to Geoffrey Gatza for all his hard work on behalf of poetry.
Soft thanks to Lotus and Kiwi for their calico goodness.

The Traveling Farmers Tale, The Crop of this Place, Muscle Tissue
like Crabmeat, and Sculpture Garden Crossed with Calendar appeared in

Luna Luna.

In memory of Kiwi, sweet presence on my desk and on my shoulders,

who stayed long enough to help me finish the book.

In the waking night

The forests have stopped growing
The shells are listening
David Gascoyne

The most common form of communication on planet Earth is

bioluminescence.
Dr. Sylvia Earle

Water is best.
Pindar

Green Glass Candy Dish as Plague Vector

Bacterial preamble greener than balloons, released as new theater. Rumors
filter out through the garden wall:
Someone died from a handful of candy at the soccer match. A Mass card was
found on a bathroom floor where plague victims died the night of the dance.
Rhododendrons unfold on the terrace as a couple sip the venomous evening,
dip into the green glass dish left on a balustrade, geared to contamination.
Green ellipse calls out a signal and the night sky raises all its horns.
A new maze forms in the garden, patterned after permeable membrane.
Rumors filter about a green cult of bubonic nightclubs.
The word quarantine echoes at the fold of a galaxy.

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Shadow of a Boat
a garden without water has no plants
in its most spare form

one of many possible

depends on gravel and a rake

artistry of the salt plow

its constant rearrangement

buckles under smoldering dials

oppression crude as a birdcage

disarmed by miscalculation

the shell of a bus outside a condemned warehouse

facets of production funnel backward

permanent regions lacking

a garden without water shows itself red as sunrise

dry boat slides its shadow across an abandoned feed lot

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Camels in Dry Dock

Camels turn their heads toward a rhythm of caravans crossing water, step
into a mirage with dead sound of bells in a backpack.
semi-arid streaked in calcium
False water documents the garden with mosaic shimmer. Its wall of sand and
glass, its wall of temperature. The purpose of a mirage is to distract, not lead.
into a forest of saplings
Arctic figures patrol a highway, each pointing in the direction of the next. No
two can be seen at the same time. Intervals between them vary to throw off
distance perception.
gem-colored logs that used to be wood
A school of camels churn uphill, drinking deep drafts of red sand, their feet
seeking groundwater. Mars out of orbit passes in a lifeboat.
plains of galactic salt
The garden simulates a ribcage open and whistling, visible for a split instant.
into safe harbor

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Perfect Square
science bases itself on symmetry so the garden is a perfect square
light at violet
dont let hosing distract you or spiral confound around steel drain
light angles violets to metal edge
substation infinite
zenith sheds latitudes across the earth
lays a scheme on shifting topography

pfct sq

outline of abandoned cabin in snow

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Circulation Garden
This clever garden maps the human circulatory system. The heart is laid out
with special whimsy. Densely concentrated plants represent the mitral, aortic,
tricuspid, and pulmonary valves. Their leaves expand and contract in
response to light.
If you look more closely, it could be the blood map of any species with a
heart, lungs, and a brain. Spare parts for these organs are always in short
supply, but the garden compensates with abundant plantings.
Or a map so changed by three million years that spare parts no longer apply.
Any hope of retrofitting evolved out long ago.

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Hell Is a Ranch House Built in 1960

corner of the garden where
amber flowers thick as barbed anemone
overrated
pelvic bone found in a field
repurposed as a back-porch planter
memory half clinging like snakeskin or a lazy snake
because you know yourself the bearer of lungs
because you dont know where to deliver them
coarse injunction slips through email
to a place that thickens and feels like home
shot through with bad thoughts
you only live there
break in with your head if you dont have a key

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Garden Wedding
what does it mean when demons appear as a bar of mercury?
sky hatches into pantomime
everything is a palindrome or nothing is
quantify injury
whats it like being someones love interest?
that feeling when he shakes his grill all over you
smelling your pillow everywhere
picking tiny bones off a stone bench

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Air Version of a Garden

This version centers on particulates of different weights. What remains of the
fountain ran dry a long time ago.
What remains of air is a layered terrarium. Inside its jar a trail meanders from
base to lid, locked in place with a bar on a hinge.
This version counters with something military, perhaps a chainsaw.
What remains of the garden is green and metal, but not green metal.
Corrosion covers its surface in an ancient manner.
Nothing ancient about the particulates implicit in this train of accusation.
Layers of soot blacken the fountain, interlock in a foregone lattice.

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Afterlife of Wild Yellow Cats

Ignore wildlife protocol at your peril. Pay special attention to its method of
explicating phases in succession.
socket-loosed moon ricochets without warning
Download all patches, however frequent, for accurate navigation. The garden
enjoys a gold substrate similar to or suggesting heaven.
esthetic hereafter equals yellow slink of ocelot
Orchard gone, rigging gone, frozen over some place that evokes Finland but
fits imperfectly on the map.
autumn fire devolves into a pocked ball
Nothing left of its far north metric but a folded yellow cat clinging sideways.

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Mountain of Stratification (cross-section of a garden)

small cinder cone smoking smelling like tar
like a time when leaves and dust came under a huge footprint
something other than we were led to believe
what cones up topples down
from a cold era smelling of half after midnight
invasion by red garden furniture vile
to where everything melts and rears up smoking
invasion by yellow ceramics peculiar
an oil-packed resurfacing
species teeth stretch backward grim as halogen
no telling what physical gravel might enter the mind

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Oranges, Oranging
harvest oranger than a fireball
fear the crop in its oranged version
eagle slashes by orangelight
self-improvement oranges your eyeballs
torches will orange you if you point them wrong
fall asleep in an oranged crop circle
orange to rust melt a trumpet
theres a copy of orange in some folder
orange treads on metal stairs
orange dirt angle where stairs end
(in a courtyard that bordered the sea before the sea moved)
orange sandbar at both ends of the day
its not a fire escape its orange ringing underfoot
sometime tomorrow a bomb will orange the city
crime scene tape is oranging in advance of its crime
sun has already oranged for the last time
(underground a coal town goes on burning)

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Garden Market with Minotaur

dark red rides high
surrounded by newsstands
lighter vein streaks his midsection
hes the Milky Way behind a fence
his amaranth crop his wild thyme harvest
rears on hind legs
cattle red labyrinth hard drive
brandishes his tassel
one-way pornography arcade
his piles of corn his heaps of squash on fire
sudden horns throw the market in a spiral
gutted sky trampled circus dirt
hell and heaven over garden wall
his horns of toss his horns of plow
urge to surrender
in red company
urge to his galactic high charge

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