Pamela Ahlen
Pervasive Invasive
No cultivar
twines the pine,
a weeping misery
needing more than calamine.
The bitchin’ itch
doesn’t come on like a rose,
isn’t pretty as a daisy,
drives some of us crazy
as oily words oozing out
misogynistic throats.
Goats chew it up
[the shiny three-leaf kind]
then poop it out with immunity.
But I ask you, blistered sisters,
what antidote
can eradicate that other creep unlikely to go anytime extinct?
Pamela Ahlen is the author of the chapbook Gather Every Little Thing (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Cider Press Review, The Adirondack Review, Birch Song Anthology among others. She is the program coordinator for Bookstock Literary Festival held each summer in Woodstock, Vermont. Pamela organizes literary events for Osher (Lifelong Education at Dartmouth) and has compiled and edited the Anthology of Poets and Writers: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years at Dartmouth.
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