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  • Like the Serpent in Eden Is the Trumpet Vine
  • Philip Metres (bio)

Of its creeping signs, I need to inform my new neighbor.When we first arrived, some years before, a lovely cluster

hung like hair over the back deck, the blood-orange trumpetstrumpeting the sound of blood-orange. For seasons, while we slept,

it grew as our children grew, unnoticed, leaping slow-motionfrom lattice to apple tree a body’s length away, near the chain

link, anchoring its tendrils, until, between deck and apple,it made a tent of shade. Then the apple died, strangled

by mute trumpets. The lattice tore, muscled out by vine’s desire.Even the throttled evergreen turned brown. Last summer,

I dug five tentacles, poured boiling water on roots,razing it from root to shoot. Thought I’d won. This spring, it threw

ten hands through the deck, and further, to the neighbor’s tree,the frantic flinging of a creature not yet ready

to die. I tell my neighbor, Watch this vine. It will invadethe yard, crack the foundation. Jonathan yawns, exhausted

father of four, not enough time to wrestle with gardens.I say, it’s wound around the link. You’ll have to cut the fence . . .

What do you do? I ask. I study Torah. Rabbinicaltrack? I ask. Maybe. Studying Torah doesn’t pay well.

The world doesn’t pay well for the spirit, I say. Smiling,he shakes his head, weary. Beneath the surface of the seen,

as rain turns to snow, the vines coil and ache and wait for spring.Keep your eyes open, I say. I will, he says. We

pause to consider the intricate trouble of beauty. [End Page 145]

Philip Metres

Philip Metres has written ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), Sand Opera (Alice James Books, 2015), Pictures at an Exhibition (Akron Series in Poetry, 2016), and The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan Press, 2018). Awarded the Lannan Fellowship, three Arab American Book Awards, two NEAs, and the Adrienne Rich Award, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.

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