Po’ Tree

To me,

Reading

Leaves from skin’d

White

Pulp of trees;

Rag

Lips drooping with

Roots of speech

Twiggs leves blosmes floures

Etrange frute

Hanging from Imperial

is ’ems populous routes

Olde English thought stems

Smoothly articulated limbs

What trees would have done with hands

Reach, reach for a loftier expression, the

Tarzan cry-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y

In the dark jumble of un-

Tamed and tethered

Tongues

Too black for words

You ’sposed to swing from the

Bulging

O’s, loose vowels

Twist’d mouth

Consonants

O dark continents

Swingin in a southern breeze

Hear the frute o’

Tongue tied roots

Ax the po—uh (unh hunh)

Replace the the wit duh ... a

Febyll tre that falleth at the fyrst strok!

Cypresses wthoute dignitee, syck

a more

Scent of magnolia

Dutch elm disease

I beshout’d at him a tre-e-e-

atise on

Dead and dying leaves po

Tree you can gnaw on till

Sap oozes, runs like blood

Po ol’ tre, he said southern style please ...

Wind gatherin from m’ paper sleeves

Cruel soliloquies of this

Pastoral scene

Whence came haunting song, cane

Thrashing back!

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Way down yonder by the po

Po tree where

Weepin widows ’neath Spanish moss

Still pines away scarred human cross

Forced sentences

Dark subjects

Unable to read

Propositions

Ol tomatums

Pre fix’d at break neck speed by

Poplars’ demand

Black byrds wither round n wilt

’member’n

What hands have done with trees

Threatening white sheets

Singe thin ash dun shins

O dark tendril’d

Limbs blotted like ink, I had the

Impression of running,

Running down limb skin’d tree

Blood on the leaves, blood at the root

O leaf fall of scattered finger tips

Pressed for words

“They’ll shoot you like a mocking bird”

See what they do to these damn po

Trees must do with hands

For this book open

Wound

Word become flesh

Beaten to a pulp

Dried and pressed

For the rain to gather

Wind to suck

Lord, Lorca, Dumas,

Cha ... Head swirlin’

in a paper breeze

Eyes weep fo dese

Death sentences read

Poet trees mutilated

Out of breath ...

“For the wind was changing notes as it went through the

branches. I imagined this was music, was surprised to hear

someone calling my name. Fe ... de ... ri ... co ... it

seemed to be saying. I listened for a long while and realized

that the branches of an old poplar were rubbing sadly and

monotonously in the wind.”

See, hear who be

done beat this ’ere

Strange n bitter crop

O what’s poplar

Not popular I said

Still never lifting my

10 volume head

Read the fresh way

A tree’s leaves

have of stirring the

winds makes it sound

sound so much like

running water—

Po trees babblin

Brook I spat!

Watching the mænads tear

Orpheus apart

Bulging eyes, twisted mouth

Still singing

His head washes ashore

Tarred and feathered

Neck twisted unloose

For the sun to rot, crows to pluck

They’ll make a noose of

Words

Shoot

Paper

Bullets

Strangle

Piercing tongues like

Birds mocking birds

Blood on the leaves, blood at the root

Poetry’s

Foul play that bleeds

Skinned, headless, plucked

10 cents a breast and a wing

Beat yo’ drum sticks and sing

Notes:

Passing is or can be—passing something on—energy, resonance, a radiating field.

The first page of “Po’ Tree,” my first soundable, awoke me in my sleep the first morning after her departure.

Lori bird with the beak’d mouth. That was my first entry into writing sound poetry with the tension between speaking and singing, music and silence—sprechtstimme.

It was a carryover from earlier in the day when I misheard someone exclaim, “I want some po’try!” I was happy until I realized he was fantasizing about chicken.

____

This work part of the portfolio “julie ezelle patton: J Walking Through the Alphabet” in the March 2026 issue of Poetry and is excerpted from J Walking Through the Alphabet by julie ezelle patton and edited by Abou Farman and Janice A. Lowe (Nightboat Books, 2026).

Source: Poetry (March 2026)