Little Starts

Abstract

Little Starts Nomi Stone (bio) My wife secretly tooka bunch of cuttings this fallwhile I stood watch: two leaves of a succulent from IKEA, a tiny nubfrom the Milkcrate Café on Girard,and that other dangler at the boring party in the room with the coats.It sent out two beet-red roots! When it did, mywife yelled out to me just before breakfast: Wife! The terrible part is holding your nerve,and leaving it on the sill aloneuntil it has lost all its inner water. Only then it sends out rootslike a wandering mouth.How careful plants are with each other: when the deer feedon the branches of the beech trees,the leaves of their neighbors become bitter. Little start,breath-start, it is so hardto do everything over from nothing. My wife came by herselfto this country for me. She didn't even haveher winter boots. She feeds the tiny starts bloodfrom her own Mooncup, root-bright, beet-bright. [End Page 108] From our bed, I hear the squelchbefore she carries it, carefully,to the sill in the sun. [End Page 109] Nomi Stone nomi stone is a poet and an anthropologist, and the author of two full-length poetry collections, Stranger's Notebook and Kill Class, a finalist for the Julie Suk Award. She is the winner of a Fulbright fellowship, and her poems appear in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize anthology, the Nation, the New Republic, and elsewhere. * Copyright © 2020 University of North Carolina Wilmington