#todayspoem
from Hotbeds in Norfolk, Virginia by Ariana Benson
Today, they flattened the house across the street
into memory—siding panels rotting like rinds
in the yard’s clovers and crabgrass. It’s constant,
the vinyl harvest: red, yellow, pink—all stripped
to the same blanched flesh. To make a space
more enticing, they say. But I was fed
on sweetness sprung up from dirt, and nobody
skins an apple they intend to candy.