Ode To The Cilantro On 6th & Maple

Audio: janan alexandra reads.

Down the street there’s a spring
of cilantro jetting up from a crevice

in the sidewalk. Sprouting like a feathery
hand it said pick me and leave a little too. You know

what I mean when I say feathery? The outer leaves
starred and waxy but if you get down into the inner

sprigs you’ll find they’re furled, tufted, soft as a kitten’s
eyelashes if a kitten had eyelashes. I felt my way

to the base of two or three green stems and tugged.
Given its rogue home in the pavement I imagine

no one planted this particular cluster of cilantro,
which perhaps feels crowded by concrete and yearns

instead for the soft bed of pleasantly amended soil
in the garden directly above, but maybe it is still glad

to live in the sun even without any herb kin nearby,
no sibling posy to spill or brush against. Maybe someone

had a hole in their pocket, lo and behold a hole in their packet
of seeds, and out leaked the little dusts of grain

which aren’t little dusts at all, but woody coriander kernels
etched with thin lines as if drawn by a fine-tipped pen,

pendulous as candle lanterns bobbing in the night.
Or, somebody was walking around seed-bombing

the sidewalk. Probably the only good use ever
of the word bombing. Or the wind did it, scattering life

hither & thither as the wind is wont to do.
Did I tell you that the wind was singing, too?

All day crooning around my shoulders & neck,
hollering ambiently in the crystalline air. We live

in a landlocked state which means we are far
from the ocean, and yet the wind was a wave.

Roaring and moaning, whooshing and clapping,
the wind was a saw that droned, dropped the whine

of its long dark notes into our ears with horsetail
clouds swishing overhead. There was even a white

plastic bag sailing around the still-naked treetops,
perhaps fancying itself a cloud or dove riding

the sky’s long back, catching the air in its lungs
swollen on its own crinkling song, flying alone

along, red carryout letters rippling in the fresh light—
THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

THANK YOU

JANAN ALEXANDRA is a Lebanese-American poet and MFA candidate at Indiana University. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, and the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. She currently works as Associate Director of the IU Writers’ Conference, in addition to teaching creative writing classes to undergraduate students. You can find her work in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Muzzle, The Adroit Journal, Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab-America, and elsewhere.

Originally published August 2020 in poiesis 1.2: syzygy by w the trees.