Organic Wasp Repellent

The ferns are out of favors, jutting into 

direct sunlight on these hottest of days, 

when steam drunk wet wasps in lawn

mower blades call in clouds with their 

corpses; they've nursed on thyme and 

cloves. We'll, I've been rewarding myself 

for finishing before tasks are done, and

it's not working. Call it what you will: out 

of the sunlight something is rotting, even

as mulberries bake on sullen sidewalks. 

The birds knock on power lines asking for 

water, water we have, but they may have

avian flu. We'll halve the evenings with

rain: lightning before, and fireflies after.

Of Benefit to the ecosystem

The wolf bites the man’s neck

but it’s only to remove the tick

now weeks past eviction notice

for failure to write its daily poem;

symbiosis must work somehow,

like the roof that makes a deal

with the gutters to keep a portion

of water and leaves nestled under

its shingles. Even the sidewalks

get paid in gum, dark horse cigs,

and losing lotto tickets. Give us

each day our due, in losses or

in gold, in trash or in silver dollars,

in blood or bags of grass clippings

beyond fermentation, a distillation

of summer, golf course dandelion

wine, sipped by field mice, while

pellets beyond the shattered clay

pigeons weep just enough arsenic

into a field routinely sprayed with

the gentlest poisons so potatoes

can complete their eyeless rise.

Ori Fienberg

Ori Fienberg is the author of Old Habits, New Markets (elsewhere press). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in venues including the Cincinnati Review, The Dallas Review, Diagram, Okay Donkey Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Online, Sixth Finch, and Subtropics. Ori teaches poetry writing for Northeastern University. Read more at orifienberg.com and follow @ArtfulHerring for poetry and political tweets.