Kerri Shying

all the ways to kill the morning glory

it's been there now for 12 years

flowering in a paintbox made of mauves

and frank purple little white clit

singing come and get me to the bees

the football hooligan of the neighbourhood

weighing heavily on fences smotherer

of saplings herbs vines you want

for fruit and everybody hates you

for letting this little terrorist in

worried it will cross their border

overwhelm the gardenia cover the phlox

with those heart-shaped horrors hungry

to find the sun running marathons up paths

look it's so pretty you were delighted on that first sight

i'm imagining my mouth set at twenty to seven

and the eleven between my eyes gave you pause

picking the sticky thing to push behind one ear

it was something I've never done so many shades

and I'll give it that

this year is different my year of success I stopped with

the round-up and the pesticides a decade ago

it was leaving notes on the kitchen table asking for more

the science was coming out too on poisons

I moved to clipping it untwisting and slicing

it was the telephone wiring

of the plant world a party line

they were all in on

killing it with fire is in my arsenal

that's been my problem

to be frank all one way no off switch

all and/or nothing have my cake

you know the cliches so

in the interests of avoiding the penitentiary

it seemed this year maybe I might smother the thing

to death me Christo of suburbia wrap it in old sheets

and drop cloths literally suffocate it I mean it's

a kind of equation if i got my high school biology right

admittedly there was lots of filling pencil cases with gas

from the bunsen burners but if it has no light

the fucker dies

right

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Kerri Shying is a poet/community worker of mixed Wiradjuri/Chinese/Australian heritage who has published 3 full-length collections and a chapbook. She is a respected disability advocate and convenes the online mutual aid writing group for Writers with Disability "WU"

Olive leaves cast shadows against a red surface