STINGING NETTLE by Hanae Jonas

—Thing to get
down to:
              a rich interior life.

I understand this
is funny—already

I’ve gotten intimate
about my wreck. Everyone’s

heard something
from me
              about sex, but

what about his body, prone,
fermenting
              on the bathroom floor?

Wouldn’t sleep in our bed
out of guilt—maybe

a need to be alone
with suffering. I

lay singly but didn’t
talk about it. That ritual which has
              no place.

What was inside me
was not yet

barrenness, but your basic
kitchen garden—ample

but weedy, weeds ripe
for the yanking out—
              a tract of fertile metaphor.
 
—Stinging nettle, bristly
              oxtongue, panic grass /
witch’s hair—

How should I fill my days
now that I’m admitting
              I’ve got nothing?

Look into the world,
the world suggests. Forget
 
the obvious comparisons
between plants and
              your feelings.
 
The lavender
clouds spill over a real place
              called Michigan—
             
But who cares
what you call the outside

if the inside is shorn clear—
absent
              now even

of absence,
that lush
              lacerating field—