Talia Isaacson
​

                                   Georgic: Stutter

                                        I knew what I wanted. Train anything enough and it’ll fit into place.
                                        On  Tuesdays,  we  trellised  with rolls  of  twine  and a  square knot.
                                        Pinch the suckers, stretch the vine. Little yellow flowers, right where
                                        we expected them. The woody  bases, bare as my wrist. J insisted we
                                        prune them down to bone. No fungus. No disease. Just small orbs of
                                        pale fruit, smooth and clean. Clip the leaves that don’t belong. We’d
                                        finish and scan from the hoop house door. Thin green lines, taut and
                                        sharp. Wound tight like ligaments. I wanted a body like that. Tuned,
                                        stretched. Plucked, I’d make a perfect sound. 

Economy of Scale

Days pumped in and out.
Hunger arrived at 10 am,
 
then subsided. At the wash station,
J explained how get the greens dry: crank
 
the orange spinner against your sternum. So hard
it leaves a mark. I love when that bruise
 
comes back, she said. I press and it feels
like summer. I started to scar myself,
 
let the sun score shapes into my back. Scratched
fly bites into scabs. Hilling potatoes,
 
the skin on my palms opened
into craters: when I stretched my fingers,
 
the wounds gaped like mouths. Each part
of me changing shape, becoming
 
its own tool. Weird how it works,
J said. Pile dirt on the stem,
 
it starts sprouting roots. I taught
myself to use the hoe on both sides,
 
evening the load. Row after
row of this, combing the earth
 
from itself. I got used to it, every
week, pulling and pulling it up.
 
Every week, some quiet force
coming, pushing it all back down.



 
Talia Isaacson (she/they) is a writer and outdoor educator from San Diego. She has received support from Fishouse Poems and the University of Virginia's MFA Program, where she was a Poe-Faulkner Fellow and the recipient of a Henfield Prize. Currently, she lives and works on unceded Kumeyaay land in Julian, California, where she leads outdoor programming for youth.




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