I researched this poem, I promise

Poetry by ​​Mary Rose Manspeaker

but I can’t say that’ll be of any use.

Every plant either has evolved from a tree or will
become one, & an oak is closer siblings to a dandelion
than a maple.  
                           Don’t quote me on the specifics. Crustacean
doesn’t mean anything either,                        swear to god. That’s just
a thing we called a thing                     to understand it. Everything clawed
could someday carcinise into a crab. Broad categories are fashioned

for whose convenience?

I sat on the blades of grass                  thinking about it
until they itched my skin & there was no comfort
                                                                                          in sitting & my shoulders were full
                                                                              once again of freckles or moles or uncertain

futures. This worries the difference
between truth & what we can learn about it;
 
                                        by truth I mean something that exists
                           but maybe not here & by we I mean everything.
                           Sometimes you can reduce
                           all of it to a single object; the world, the people,
                           the truth; it makes
                           sense that way. I don’t know

how nuance & ethics overlap
but to quote Molly Brodak: the good question is always
how. The trees still exist outside,
& I’ve written that in a million different ways,

                                                                                     or plucked the deer from their roots,
                                                                            easing their antlers from the bark.
                                                                            I should probably learn something
                                                                            about trees, except trees aren’t real
                                                                            just a plant with structures thick enough

to hollow into a home.

Passivity unbecoming of the poet, calling a creature another name            
                               any name
to make sense of it.                 If I moved into the pond
how would I call myself?                You can’t love
                                                anyone
without knowing them.
 
But that was lazy of me. Forget that ending.

I don’t know what any of this means without you

& someday it will mean nothing at all.

Wait & let me try again
​

Mary Rose Manspeaker

Mary Rose Manspeaker was born and raised in West Virginia. They currently live in Brooklyn, where they teach at St. Joseph's College. They are the Catching Up Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal, a 2021 Brooklyn Poets Fellow, and their recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, TYPO, The Shore, and elsewhere.​​