Emily Rosko

Complaint to Gas-Powered Leaf-Blowers

Blasted! May the fuel-to-air ratio choke you! May
you suffer a clog! A human being is one
mouth, one nose, two sensitive ears and eyes,
and you go around pretending your hose’s a kisser,
unpeeling the wind each Monday in the neighbor’s
weedy lawn. You whine at the tree-grime drying
to soot after the last big rain. Your holler
is a brain-drill, emptying me out of all
common decency (the words you never hear
me call you). Birdsong, pulsebeats, etc. drown
within you. How we must endure your dutiful
cleaning—the earth is very dirty, so dirty,
and your CO2 emissions can swallow the one
thousand miles of a Toyota Camry. You specialize
in a fine particulate matter, smogging
your carrier. You harden lungs with benzine,
dizzy the brain with crossed wires. How can you
justify your existence? Do we not have arms
and hands and the pious broom that some
say the Shakers perfected by flattening?
Do we not wheeze enough already from increased
pollen counts our warming planet makes?
If a tree could grow us dollars. If people
could be fed by the fruits of their labor. If
we did not acquiesce to the maintenance
of the perimeter. If the grass did not require
the anti-mosquito/ant/ground bees/termite spray
and the pre-emergent and the weekly low-cut
in order for us to lay our one tender body down
in the sun’s high-beams. Leave the debris
to its carbon meltdown, you wannabe jetpack.
You ought to be regulated to hell’s inner circle
to serve as the backup while the bones
and demons run up the scale off-key.

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Emily Rosko is the author of three poetry collections: Weather Inventions (U Akron P 2018); Prop Rockery (U Akron P 2012); and Raw Goods Inventory (U Iowa P 2006). She co-edited A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (U Iowa P 2011). She is Professor of English at the College of Charleston and an editor at swamp pink.