Issue: Spring/Summer 2020
The nursery at the foot of the hill
does not sell privet—it sells pribet.
As if the hedge were a croaking frog
in a bend of the ribber. Eberything
I know suggests they hab got it wrong,
but I pay cash for my fibe-gallon bucket
of pribet, dribe home, dig a bery deep
dibot in the earth, plant it firmly,
and lib happily eber after. The end.
Paul Willis is a professor of English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He has published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2018) and Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants (White Violet Press, 2019). He is also the author of an eco-fantasy novel, The Alpine Tales (WordFarm, 2010), and of the essay collections Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (WordFarm, 2005) and To Build a Trail (WordFarm, 2018). www.pauljwillis.com