Web Site Maker


Individual Voices / Natural Forms

Winter, 2006


Doren Robbins


The Garden Now


Ended up kneeling by the bleached beak of a wren curled on its back, the breast feathers and the skin disconnected, pulled back. Ended up with the vision going and the intestine whistling, unbathed except for his gums, which he rinsed and picked to save from his teeth. Or was it the other way around? He had the dream again, the kidney of the twelve year-old Eva Korr ending up in his egg tray, again. Prison-camp mutilator doctor's image, surviving twin children’s experiments testimony—“you better fucking believe I know why I didn't end up with any of her twin sister's organs,” he raged a little to himself. Ended up with one of the lousy body parts Jews were once famous for—that and all of the other luckless affinities. Or was it the other way around?, and this was the garden, and he was stupid to doubt it, and he buried the wren with the girl's kidney, made a nest from the brown strings of unwatered geraniums to cradle them in the ground, in a branch bed, in his mind, in the garden. And the hidden stems of morning glory and the mock orange petals went right on spilling their juices. A red moth landed to fertilize the poppies.