Tuesday poem #27 : Stephanie Bolster : KUDZU

This vine thrives.

It’s got devices.

Drives the car, beep-beep

beep-beep yeah.

Came over from Japan

for an Expo in Philly,

1876, just after Edo

(now things could come and go).

Goats munch it,

it slows erosion,

it can make a chair

or a fuel or a quiche

(with eggs and cream and cheese

and ham and dough).

It’s got isoflavones.

Weaves a mean basket.

Plant it for $8 an acre.

But wait!

In summer, a foot a day.

Sixty a year.

The shack soon defunct.

Leave the car a week, windows down,

and it’ll fill with twisted hoopla.

Hear that yee-haw?

Watch the field reach closer

as you roll the dough.

Watched your loved ones’

whereabouts.

Eat the stuff

before it eats the South.

Stephanie Bolster’s latest book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award, and more recent work was a finalist for the 2012 CBC/Canada Writes competition. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and teaches writing at Concordia University in Montréal.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan