POETRY

Tomato Season

Robert Rinehart

I placed rotting banana peels into the dirt trough,
carefully, like interring a body, folding cascades
of soil over & over again. It reminded me of sifting
flour into a bowl, adding egg & milk, some vanilla
drops to give it hope, a method of severance
from the everyday, a purpose. Then turned dough
into batter, adding in more liquid. For mulch,
I sprinkled fertilizer pellets—pink, blue, &
yellow—then folded the mess over and over
until it screamed Enough! Somehow, I felt
its eagerness, its fecundity, stirring up just enough
passion to create some new & virile life form.

Robert Rinehart is a dual-citizen writer living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Work has appeared in a fine line, Mayhem, New Feathers Anthology, Sky Island Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Maryland Literary Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Backlit, and Syncopation, among others. Website: robert-rinehart.com