"The Tree" by Marcelo A. Orsi Blanco.
© Please do not reproduce without artist's permission.
DR. MACIA'S UNREAL TREE
by Aje Björkman
In the abandoned tunnel, where the wind
weaves a muddy yarn, and an arched mouth
swallows the whale of the industrial park:
the chromium steel of the big city-sprawl;
the smell of ammonia from swastikaed walls.
It was there, in Detroit-dark, that Dr. Macia
initiated a plan to plant a hawthorn tree,
to set sail to the throat of the tunnel —
to dismember the members of disbelief,
the notion that no thing grows in darkness
but leprosy and leprechauns and anemic
lemon-sucking vampires and O-positive blood-
food bums dressed in blues and purples handed
down from the laissez faire fist of outlier care.
So, Dr. Macia spirited the ground and
let the root-juice trickle down, further down,
and up — the wiry, hairy fingers stretched
out on a limb: exoneration at hand.
Come here, Dr. Macia said. Come and see!
And a lowly, lovely bum, seen
as a red dot in the dark, said:
That, good man, is quite unreal. Say
is it a lemon-tree?
Aje Björkman is of Swedish birth, his feet planted in Swedish soil, too: he´s a freelance journalist and writer based in Karlskrona. His previous creative work in Swedish has appeared in Rymden and Bonne Nouvelle, and his first English offering appeared in Remaking Moby-Dick, a special issue of the Pea River Journal.
