I sit in linen shorts and earthen shoes banging wood building outlines

Perimeters

controlled barriers that imitate neatness but
            are in anthropocene DNA now

industrialized robots that we are

branwashing we don’t realize until

we become disabled and

                                    realize we were only wanted in society for bodies we
no longer have

You’d think women would empathize

broken bodies were only commodities before they broke

and only societal dross now

as you tell me I who cannot travel more than five miles without three months’ notice and who cannot process food or know when I can go outside, need to be at a test to prove what all the doctors have told you, in eight days

Prove /again/ you are unable to work due to your disability

because work is all we are here for

I give up wondering if you will pass by and be confused or think checkmate when you see me walking

lifting sitting bending

because I can’t usually do any of those things

but you only see me when im out

not the other 97% of time when im saving up for those movements

not the other time when im charting thirty-seven tabs of medical information to see if it’s safe for me to go out yet

or if I will injure myself

collagen-free being that I am

we teach competiton to children

        sports 

                    as though collaboration cannot be taught
without a loser at the end

                    without violence

without sprained knees and concussions

    a culture of war

a culture of forcing movement outside relation with the earth

a culture of new expensive slavery we justify by paying the enslaved

but not thinking about the
                        violence inherent in forcing         someone to eat sleep exercise
on a bllionaire’s schedule

I hate crape myrtle less with this fir box around it

double medicated today

ninety degrees at least

my uncooling body sweats for the first time

in a decade

sun beats down on the pink and white stripes of my belly and back

I turn in the screws. One, two four, six, twelve, twenty-three

I don’t know where the twenty-fourth is

I hurt my shoulders, turning the screwdriver

turning

turning

to hem in this ugly plant

enough Whiteness in me to want to own this

not enough to cut it down
        enough to hurt myself doing it

now a tidy box with myrtle spilling out of it

to be filled with random plants

wildflowers

the native child in me fighting always with the White

easy to forget in this nazi town that other colors imperialize too

but they are not who im responsible to atone for being

Garden is the ultimate wondering place of control,
            of defining the natural and
                            the                                 good.

I stll hear master gardeners say “weed” as though it’s a real concept, rather than simply a judgmental misnomer for a plant whose purpose you are too ignorant to know yet.

My yard helpers cut mimosas without asking

                                                                                    assuming I want them cut

                                                                                                                                     they grow instantly here

like drunken bunnies

and grow their pink fans and feather fronds desperate to sell burlesque tickets in my backyard

the boys don’t know mimosas are useful for mood disorders, male things, and other needs

just like burleque and fandances are

still there is enough whiteness in me to be happier finishing the screwing together of these boards

pouring with sweat

penning in this ugly plant into a managed fir box in the yard

than to leave them randomly with the lie of the old Scott’s grass around it