A gathering. Photo credit: C. Finch
by Petra Kuppers
(upon drifting at Lillie Park, Ann Arbor)
Poison sumac: red gothic earrings on gnarled fingerbones.
Velvet touch of a lamb’s ears cabbage patch, linden-green pulse in the ground.
Black garbage bags, burnt into devil finger’s fungus.
Rake up a blue shirt. Orange netting lichen.
A shaped metal thing, as if a locomotive brayed it toward spread.
Bitumen patches, rain-curled out of seals.
Dinosaur seed pods, swollen purple with green sticky sap.
Acorn nut, un-hatted, veined, split, keeps the secret.
(As featured in Diver Beneath the Street, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press, February 2024)
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Petra Kuppers lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She’s a disability culture activist and a community performance artist who drifts on the land — slow meanders by wheelchair, scooter, or slow bi-pedal cane walk, taking in the histories and fantasies of sites. This poem emerged from such a sensory drift in Pittsfield Township’s Lillie Park.
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This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, an Ann Arbor-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local Washtenaw poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at poettreetowna2@gmail.com.
