Autumnal Sycamore

Spring’s go-go green’s flung over for harvest season’s
70s kitchen colors just in time. Cultivated thornless
For the burbs, honey locusts heap their leaves up
Like gold pieces for the common folk, a school
Of minnows the cat might dream of, stretching,
Flexing his paws, all Japanese maple & symmetrical
Velvet.

Worker worm made silk of me, too. Drank me black
With plenty of sugar. I’ll soon be copper flashing myself,
Vague and valuable, oxidized, atomized, everywhere
At once, as god is said to be. And all those greenhorn
Acorns like baby sex, you take them, chipmunk,
Just don’t hibernate in my attic. I need my mad women
Fierce.

Kathy Fagan has authored four collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Lip (Eastern Washington UP, 2009). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Slate, Field, Ploughshares and The New Republic, among many other journals. She has been awarded fellowships by the NEA and Ingram Merrill Foundation, and her first book, The Raft (Dutton, 1985) was a National Poetry Series selection.