The pumpkins are kept in steerage,
lowest part of the farm,
until they are worth faces.

Sweet cider for sale
through the night, cure for insomnia,
lost keys, fertility, and wrath.

Turnips in the shapes
of famous heads. Einstein twitching
beet-red, Coriolanus, the lost

childhood of Christ. Rainbow
cabbage climbing the food ladder.
String beans that crawl

under the threshold. Celery
to break the backs
of fire ants. Rhubarb, by flank

and muscle, straining
at the hitching post. Berry crusts,
squash in pantaloons,

milkmaid plums fresh
from puberty. I parked
my car

at the stand for a season,
stalks of wheat
between my teeth, earned

college tuition, basted
my skin chokecherry
scarlet, creamy with apple cores.