Jodeen Wink
is a Wisconsin native who lived in Winona, MN, for about eight years and then
moved to Rochester, MN.
She raised three girls and is going to be a grandma to a child born under the
sign of Scorpio. She grows food,
teaches several subjects in numerous places for varying wages, and writes.
Jodeen Wink
Gardener
A gardener gets dirty, gets sweaty
gets sprinkled on, rained on.
Freezing March rain soaks her head.
She gets sunburned, obsessive.
She lets her house work go
doesn’t change clothes
hair turns greasy.
hands become cracked clay
fingers black, gritty as roots.
Her tits spill over her dirty brassier.
She doesn’t care. She stoops over
ass in the air.
A gardener’s back hurts, hips ache.
Sundown, she limps houseward
itching and scratching.
Runs out of time for cooking
and lives on potato chips
thinking of spinach sprouting,
green beans breaking out of mulch,
eggplant hanging heavy as balls
in August, and tomatoes
nasturtium, marigold
soft shucking corn husk
all her children.
A gardener moves earth like a worm—
slow, while no one sees.
She forgets she’s alone, till one day
just thinking, she sees
the other little woman in the corner
by the fence by the sunflowers
just standing quiet, looking around—
whose hair is of leaves and whose skin
is in constant motion, who’s old
and dead and yet,
why, just a maiden.
