Mukethe Kawinzi is a shepherd and farmworker in Pescadero, CA.
ripgut
Italian thistle has tithed most
to my cuttings these last days.
In future Junes, rough touch
recalled, I’ll spoor less bare.
I ask Charles Darwin: come
eye the goats with me, and how
they eat spined things.
Charles Darwin picks up a rock. He tells me the present is the key to the past.
I want Charles Darwin to know I know something. I want Charles Darwin to remember me. I speak to him of beetles that bore earth. I say to him: Charlie, I’ve seen them roll dung face down/ass up. Do not question me for using 2 Live Crew as a way to Charles Darwin’s heart. I have learned, in life: there is no slicker way to charm whitefolk than to let them into blackness. Charles Darwin finishes the lyric. Charles Darwin and I squat into the royalled ripgut, and count morning spiderwebs.