MY FATHER'S POTATO DEATH
by Sean Karns
The Irish weather demands
a black umbrella, but I prefer green
over black. I see green in ways
the morning light comes up over
the green tree divide that separates
the city from green-plastic-
covered potato mounds.
business. There’s been a few cropped
heads because men with hatchets
remember days of potato scares. My father
was on duty protecting the crops,
when I found him headless holding
an umbrella.
His death reminds
me of the economics of a potato.
Potato vodka for Russians
or competing with them Idahoans.
Those fancy red rich people potatoes;
all fortified by hatchet men.
I took up the post in honor
of my father, and I will bleed out
the men who steal my potatoes.
I’ll use their blood to fertilize crops.
I will tuck them in a makeshift plastic
greenhouse and plant their heads,
call them head mounds.
I eat fried potatoes in memoriam
of the headless. I fire a twenty-one
potato gun salute into the green
haze released from the potato factory.
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