American Gothic

For God's sake, don't hand me

the pitchfork. I'll nestle instead

on the porch, by the geranium

that mimics those treetops ballooning

over the roof. The geranium,

that means, perhaps, incompetence

or friendship. Maybe both.

The geranium, the sweet scent

of which, I read somewhere,

resembles faintly the smell

of the ozone layer. Let me travel up

now, far from curtains and dentists,

through the simple stroke of a leaf―

a pioneer of the deficient,

piercing the clouds as I rise.