anti-pastoral

i

having been left here
i too collect the dead
heart-shaped leaves
a plastic lacquer 
mote thru
a sun-glitched eye

votive of some lesser
pantheon

ii

to my ugliness I place
basil
honey
a rose quartz
in a stone bowl

i’m not sure why

the plovers peck around
the idle garden in my head

i’ve never seen a bee accomplish anything
i’ve never seen the ocean
roll its tongue back so far in deference to the moon

iii

i read some root
& cruciferous vegetables
are only good to the point of bloom
the flowers bitter
the tubers
the leaves

all day i harvest
dogshit off the frying pavement
small resentments
cabbage loopers off
my dying radish

sugar sticks to the walls
slanted on the leaves

sick of the sun
the trees shrug
exhale
night clarifies

the earthworms
the silverfish
the raccoon
steals my radish

iv

at the behest of some
tiktok witches
i get two candles
give them names
separate each into bowls of water
tie a red string around their ribs
& set them alight

sever
release
alchemy
somedays it takes
burning your apartment down

v

the annual shock of winter
ash-like snow bends the wide leaf

a glamour of us arrives
photorealistic
plastic-fresh & hopeful

the grace of it
a floating world
atop a seamless horizon

a “technology of self”

o image
o trees
o witches
o bionic

Leon Barros (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based Filipinx poet and editor. They received their BA in English at UC Berkeley, and their work has been featured and is forthcoming in ANMLY, Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, beestung, diaCRITICS, and more.