Russell Jaffe

Organic things:

Beans, sleep, TV shows about green and dirt.
                      I went hiking in a forest preserve,
             and when I looked at the paths rolled out between the light ash trees
                   in November, my girlfriend and I argued

     about forest preserves. She hates the ones near my parents’
house, the way they are contained,
                     the way they are boundaries. She loves to sleep in
           the bed with me, and she loves to hear funny stories,
and the leaves outside falls like marbles in plastic tube.

           My parents shared a bed for longer than either of us have been alive,
and when we were kids we were taken for November walks, and returned home,
          blew our noses, watched TV, grew and were cultivated

into walkers now. We notice the colors, we remember our childhood games.
       The water is the color of my Marble Works set, which is gone now,

the leaves vanish from their branches, go into dirt, and are eventually gone
like meat off cattle skulls. Animals get raised and die. Trees are
                     corralled together. That’s why my girlfriend doesn’t like

them. The trees could be everywhere:

                   something I noted was the organic fruit stand
        with the cranberries, pomegranates, things the color of fall

       in bags. Gardening shows were on, the hosts walked through the woods

 to the orchards where apples and peppers were planted in rows, ready to be pulled and
consumed.

                     Lay down.

Russell Jaffe holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago and currently lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, NY. He is the founder and editor of O Sweet Flowery Roses poetics blog and teaches English at New York City College of Technology. His poems have appeared in MiPOesias, Slurve, Spooky Boyfriend, Arsenic Lobster, and others. Sometimes he also writes freelance for Pro Wrestling Illustrated, too.