The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Fault by Marcela Sulak

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SEED BANK

My parents could hardly get through breakfast
without mentioning sex. As in, I told you
I had a cold last night, but you insisted,

in lieu of bless you after my father sneezed.
We never invited any school friends over.
To love is to learn new habits, with holes in them,

for a vole or a mole, they too hunger, for a seed
or surprise— for example, an aboriginal grass
with exceptional nutritional value sold in hip

restaurants in capital cities at night, which
is how I discover decades later the weeds
in my garden were chicory. Meanwhile,

my father and brother discuss planting organic
—you can make a killing if you pitch it right
and if the insects, weeds, drought, and rain

don’t mess up a crop. Life isn’t a hobby,
after all. To love is to discern which fields
will become habitual, which words will turn over,

which pauses will yield sturdy seed banks,
which silences will reduce the water content
by 1% and which will reduce the temperature



in the room 10°F, for, taken together,
this will double the seed lifespan.
Which trees, for example, can be grafted

in such a way as to yield oranges, grapefruit,
lemons, and pomelos, all from a single trunk.
And which pecan trees can survive a watering

by the progeny with a gasoline can—he said
he was only trying to help, though, knowing him,
he was also trying for sparks, and for sparking

the pollinating flies, for love, it is so flighty a thing.

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