after Dorothea Grossman During the pandemic, after he was laid off, it was his idea
to forage for edible weeds around Queens when our food grew scarce.
From the stoop, I would watch him crouched on one knee,
his bare hands between telephone poles,
pulling up green stars from the control joints
under our mailbox full of clover mites & commercial flyers.
I almost forgot how sprawl could be so quiet.
When he returned inside, he rinsed off the stalks,
placed a rolled lot on his tongue and then on mine.
He mentioned how “sticky” foods could be a delicacy
in other cultures, as I turned my back and coughed them out.
And later in the evening, he read to me about how
indigenous women prevented pregnancy by drinking
cleaver tea, as he handed me a tall cup of it swirling with honey. | 
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