Poems and Texts

“In the Weeds” by Aditi Machado

In the Weeds

I had thought to tell a tale but between having had & having thought
a plant fell out from within the crease.

I thought to have green fingers but I move so abstractly.

I am thinking now to describe what it’s like to touch something.
What is it to rub off on someone.

When two matters interact should I hope to keep my skin.

Ambling in the wind, lost in perfections, those blips
along the odometer of time, my feet in the weeds—

my head capitulates to them. Little plants, little events. That’s how

I think. A decapitation, a lovely guillotine wind lays my mind
in the weeds. That’s how

I touch a plant. My water touches its.

This poem appears in Some Beheadings (Nightboat, 2017) and first appeared, in a slightly different version, in the anthology February (February Press, 2015).)

Photo: Siddarth Machado

Aditi Machado

Aditi Machado is the author of Some Beheadings (Nightboat, 2017) and translator of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia (Action, 2016). Her writing has also appeared in chapbook form and in journals like Volt, Jacket2, Western Humanities Review, and World Literature Today, among others. She lives in Denver and edits poetry in translation for Asymptote.

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