Sunday Morning

The Real Estate section
of The New York Times
blows from the gazebo table
to a corner of the yard where
something poisonous is taking over.

Malicious violets in the grass.
The orange patch of soil
known to pygmy pines
along the southern shore
but death to arborvitae
in suburban Essex County.

Something twisted in the rhizome
lately visible, an annexation
difficult to realize
presents its ugly symptom.

Less windy now. I zap
my coffee in the kitchen
while the headlines
fixed to photographs of mansions
cover my despoiled property
with sunlit margins,
military creases,
luxury hotels.

RICK MULLIN

Rick Mullin is a painter and writer living in northern New Jersey. His poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including American Arts Quarterly, The New Criterion, The Dark Horse, and Measure. His books include Soutine (Dos Madres, 2012), Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle (Dos Madres, 2014), and Huncke (second edition, Exot, 2021). His new collection, Grotesque Singers, was published by Dos Madres last year.