Yard Work

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Yard Work — John Birkbeck

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She's hot —
she's snappish
with the yard boy,
a 51-year-old Paisan
(her very own age),
who's high on her smell,
but too blitzed
on weed and coca
to snap under the matronisation
and nervous contempt that
she summons up for him
with brittle fingers snapping;
but her edgy calm
belies her inner volcano,
for she, too, grew up in Italy —
“Do you think you can
remember to weed the hostas?”
she snaps.
His own riper smell
seeps between their class divisions,
but both write sonnets
in the same two
languages.

(This poem has appeared, in a slightly different form, in the Poetry.com Web-zine)

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