I Plant Milkweed on My Father’s Grave
because the plant is so named
for the sticky white latex that
pours out of wounded tissues
and my father like
his father before him
died from cellular wounds
he received after a lifetime
in rubber factories.
I’m trying to find
a way through death
like the monarch butterflies
who feed on milkweed toxins
to make themselves
distasteful to predators.
Or maybe
I’m stumbling past death
like my step father,
who’s managed to out live my mother
despite feeding on the toxins of
the Hospira Pharmaceutical plant by day
and thirty packs of Busch Light by night.
I promise
when I swallow the milkweed
from your grave.
I’m not thinking of the latex,
or your cancer.
I’m thinking of the genus
Asclepias so named for
the Greek god of medicine.
I want to be healed.
I swear it.
Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca
This excerpt was originally published in Light Enters the Grove: Exploring Cuyahoga Valley National Park through Poetry, edited by Charles Malone, Carrie George, and Jason Harris (Kent State University Press, 2024). It is reprinted with permission of the press.
A literary hike through Ohio’s oldest national park. An anthology celebrating the biodiversity and staggering beauty of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Light Enters the Grove collects 80 poems, each of which reflects its author’s unique connection to a living organism found within the park—ranging from white-tailed deer to brown bats and from Japanese honeysuckle to bloodroot. Additionally, each poem is paired with an artistic depiction of the poem’s subject that reinforces the rich relationship between artists and the natural world.
Delilah McCrea is a trans, anarchist poet. She loves the NBA and knows the lyrics to every Saintseneca song. Her work can be found in Vagabond City, Gordon Square Review, Petrichor, Night Coffee Lit, and Hobart After Dark. Her debut poetry collection, The Book of Flowers, is forthcoming in December 2024 from Pumpernickel House Publishing.
Header image, Common Pawpaw, by Each+Every, courtesy Kent State University Press.
