Dominic W. Holt
American Garden
purple skin
clematis
and puss white
honeysuckle
sprawl gripping
the throats of
pinwheels and
flags
hung
from mailboxes
petunias
nod
cranium pinks
star
splattered
blues
jagged tooth
zucchini leaves
curl
mildewed yellow
prongs
on the badge
bent
toward the aorta
for each
the officer
put
in the ground
a practice
common
as blight says
the newspaper
mulched and
layered beneath
dahlias
marigolds
names ink
crowd out
the weeds
Dominic W. Holt is a poet and public policy social worker in Madison, Wisconsin. Dominic taught writing at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, interned at the Michigan Quarterly Review, and was awarded a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. Dominic holds an MFA in creative writing and a Master of Social Work in social policy from the University of Michigan, and a BS in astrophysics from Indiana University (Phi Beta Kappa). His work has appeared in International Human Rights Art Festival PUBLISHES, Lunch Ticket, Plainsongs, Poetry Quarterly, Simple Machines, Stoneboat, and other venues.