When my father takes his rototiller out by the hand, mother takes me by mine and tells me to hide, tells me I should too, because when she worked O2 in the ER a man was gurnied in with a rototiller stuck in his legs. Churned through him.
Out him.
Eat him up.
A nurse held the handles from the
front as they wheeled him down
body flooded hallways drenched
swirling red.
Strobing red.
In and out.
They leaned over him, mother
worked the O2. He saw the damage
in the reflection in their eyes. Mother
tells me he could have if he opened
them.
He hadn’t. Shouldn’t have.
The man in the gurney passed out as
the blades rotated deeper and deeper
in. Past. See, he was using a special
kind of tine.
Teeth. Slashers.
You use them in soil with
roots. In heavy patches of
them. He was in deep when
his machine got caught in
them. Roots. Tangled. When
his wife heard him being
eaten, she couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t turn it back.
Teeth eat,
let me tell you with mine.
She didn’t
know how to
turn it off,
didn’t know
where the
button was, if
there was a
button, there
was so much
red, every
where, in the
air, in her
nose, inside
her, coming
out the soil,
bubbling out
exposed veins
in open legs, it
just kept
tilling and
tilling until it
ate its way
out.
My mother tells me it’s the worst thing
she’s ever seen.
She tells father he should put his away.
When I see father take his rototiller out,
I put my eyes
away. Look
away. But son,
but son, he says,
you’ll be out here
one day in your
own garden, he
says, it’s quite
easy, you just
turn it on, the
ignition, pull the
ignition if it’s the
cord one, see I’m
not being
technical right
now, even a
know it all like
you can say you
know this and
know it, he says,
I’m looking out
for you, he says,
Looking, he says.
You know this,
he says.
I am at my window. At the glass
seeing past my reflection. My
father is out in his garden with
his machine working earth over.
Mother is in her office with
windows and doors sealed,
buried in calls, anything to
drown out the swirling red. My
father is out in it with his red
earmuffs on and his strong legs
in short shorts smoking what
comes out his lips. When he’s
finished, he drinks wine from
the bottle held at the throat, tells
me the crucial ingredient in his
twenty year run of unmatched
vegetable gardens is the soil.
The purity of his. How there are
no rocks. No roots. Not a thing
to block his vegetables’ roots
reaching deep brown into earth.
Snaking down. Strangling each
other out with spindles. Hands.
Outstretched.
