Sweet Potatoes At the End of the World

Levi Cain

i heard a rumor that summer is nothing 
to a pandemic. that the illness spits out 

the bones and brushes its molars with
the idea of sunblock and ice cream. i heard

the pandemic ate away at spring like a 
caterpillar until it reached the shivering rind of it,

paused, and then devoured that too. every day is a
constant yawning eulogy—the grocery stores waiting

like graveyards, panic thrumming deep and hot  
even after we have locked our doors 

and prayed to all the exits in the house. on the radio,
the future defies diagramming, shows itself mottled grey 

and barren as a field in december. but i am asking you
to entertain the concept of a sun-baked splendor.

i am asking you to imagine joy being only a plot of rhubarb
away from us. imagine a june ripe and bursting like a cherry

tomato, a july we do not have to cower from. instead, let us plant
corn so tall that the stalks lick every planet in the solar system. 

let us scrub soil from our nail beds with a brush 
owned by generations of brown-knuckled dykes, 

allow dandelions to crawl over the lawn like toddlers.
i will press marigolds  into books for you to find, 

spill red wine on the table and watch it fade deep into the grain. 
on any ordinary wednesday we can stretch out  into the warm dark

and farm out possibilities. touch patient lips and aloe to burned shoulders, 
dream of stuffing the apocalypse into the back of the freezer.

we can curl like fiddleheads on the bed and whisper 
about tilling the land until the evening trips into daybreak.

the end of the world has to wait: 
i want to grow one hundred sweet potatoes with you.

Levi Cain was born in California, raised in Connecticut, and currently lives in Massachusetts. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, their work can be found in Muzzle Magazine, Voicemail Poems, and the upcoming issue of 86 Logic. Their first chapbook, dogteeth was recently published by Ursus Americanus Press.