Enemy of the Rake
By Jeremy Jusek
The words in my head get scrambled.
Two hundred of us were locked up in this ten by ten
shed; set the curiosity aside for how this stationary
clown car came to be and think instead how
serious
a situation this is
Let’s start with the stakes, real unfocused, like
an optometrist’s Snellen chart at 50 yards
I see the words out of focus, nonsensical at first
pious green, relentless creep
cathedral hush, cannibal riot
Let’s start by looking at the field outside the shed:
Spoiled snow and blackened briar
and blanketing the blood-soaked soil, boots
and shirts and things we threw out.
We are reminded while our stomachs growl
(we’re going to miss chicken nugget day in this shed)
We are reminded of the power of words
vine wall veneer, frantic diaspora
milk of angels, nuclear horizon
You see,
anything endless is a weed
and all weeds left unchecked colonize
Lesser celandine ripples shockwaves across
the ecosystem, and no audience wants
its poets to drone on forever. Bulbs and youtubers
surge outward, relentlessly—swelling,
expanding in a crusade to convert
the dirt, to expel the heathens and their native faith.
If we’re not careful, the kudzu will swallow the shed
long before we are found.
Colonize: a word in strict vow of dominion.
Feel the power of resource—yes, colonize:
empire of roots, rampant fertility
holy laughter, radioactive meltdown
Poison the cattle, crowd out their old defenses.
Crawl out of your frozen hellhole
before the rake can strike,
before the boots lie buried and forgotten,
before those tubers burst and poison the fish.
We raise our venerable, vulnerable derriere to the shed door
—it will open any second now, you’ll see—
Oh and don’t forget voluptuous, and tag my insta #threeVs,
make me age gracefully as a millennial—make me
stand up to fascism before it’s too late for the woke to wake
the fuck up—make me a fool for throwing my retirement
into stocks—lock the stocks around my neck
like the other blathering idiots that were stupid enough
to dream in America. Stupid enough to think 300 million
people looked at the ol’ stars ’n stripes and somehow think
everyone all saw the same damned thing.
aggressive snodgrass, unholy choir
clotted honey, ballistic hive
But the rake still rusts in the shed,
handle splintered, waiting on our trembling grip.
We squint at each other in the glare—
still unable to see the letters on that Snellen chart,
someone replaced it, it’s full of big blurry Es.
Don’t ya know while we were fiddling with the rake
they locked the door behind us
how do you not know who locked the door behind us
you could see the maintenance man mouthing the words
fevered orchestration, unstoppable spore
demented carnival, hush of gods
no they aren’t gonna let us out
no they don’t care it’s hot in here
no they don’t care we skipped lunch
Stop striking at the weeds and demanding
the door get opened the normal way and grab a shovel instead—
let us strike so hard the door splits and we call some biologists
and perhaps a pious lawyer or three
before the kudzu eats them, too
Jeremy Jusek is former poet laureate of Parma, Ohio. He has authored three books: We Grow Tomatoes in Tiny Towns, The Less Traveled Street, and The Details Will Be Gone Soon. He hosts the Ohio Poetry Association’s podcast Poetry Spotlight, runs the West Side Poetry Workshop, and founded the Flamingo Writers’ Guild.
Editors’ Note: Jeremy Jusek read “Enemy of the Rake” during In This Together 2025, as part of PARH USA’s annual program marking the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and addressing systemic racism. View the video on the PARH USA YouTube channel here.
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