Justin Groppuso-Cook

My Body Becomes a Greenhouse

& I cry not for the fragility of glass

but for what I hold:

roots, bulbs & filaments, space

for patience. Presence

is medicine, reverence too.

Subtlety is strength: plants fine-tuning

senses beyond what I am 

understanding of. Limbs

out the redwood trunk like a voice:

Carve in me your hearts, xoxos, & curses.

I am the scroll of the unconscious.

What I’ve etched through soil is reflected

in this branching: future pulling me forth,

a sapling infused with light.

Justin Groppuso-Cook is a writer-in-residence at InsideOut Literary Arts Project and poetry reader for West Trade Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Ghost City Press, Bear Review, Harbor Review, Luna Luna Magazine, and EcoTheo Review among others. He received the 2021 Haunted Waters Press Award for Poetry and was a finalist for Black Warrior Review's 2022 Poetry Contest. His chapbook, Illuminated Pupils, was a semi-finalist for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize. More information can be found on his website, www.sunnimani.com.