by Michael Pittard

You can’t leave the radishes
on the table because the sun
will only devour them. Instead,
rip the green leaves from the
heads & leave their carcasses
to rot. Who are you to try to
eat radishes? Carrots too, come to
think of it. These veggies crunch
& bite back at your teeth.
They are not meant to be tamed.
Help yourself to the soft or the
cultivated. Refrain from the great
choices in life. Death’s red angel
will still suck your soul out from
between your toes before moving
on to your neighbor’s house, his
knock so gentle, one would never
know he had called at all.

Michael Pittard is an English lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has an MFA in poetry from UNCG and is a former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. His poems have appeared in The Bookends Review, Red Flag Poetry and Poetry South. His criticism has been published in Chicago Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, and storySouth. He lives with his wife and their cat Roosevelt, in Greensboro, NC.