Rachel Hinton

WEAK TREE

Stupid tree        shit-ass land got hit in the head
now it’s cropped up a few        organelles without cells and should we even 
barring the loss of a whole         other spring spare this
Is it even a good idea        Can we be doing this right now
Can the life of this spike         ground in sepsis, create vitamins 
in the light            Has it shot before it thought 
Orange pink silver blue       maybe we shouldn’t
have done             all 4 colors today 
Can I trust the raw moon cloud push 
on the branch it flaps like              I’ll create
Though our sky gave just               1 tree’s worth 
of chemical churchlight tonight         and now it is 
done dislodged                     running to some dumb field else

Originally from Vermont, Rachel Hinton lives in Chicago, where she works as an editor and teacher. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, SOFTBLOW, the Denver Quarterly, Apt, and other journals.