devastation baby


Poetry


Crossword Puzzle in Which Every Answer Is “Weeds”

by Robin Gow

1. What do you call a place where you take piles of your father’s hair that he sheds in moonlight?

2. _____ grow like girls you used to love.

3. You use _____ to make a wedding dress and then ask your favorite oak tree if he wants to elope with you.

4. How do you scale the wall of your parents’ house?

5. When your brother and you were hungry, you used to eat what to try to feel full?

6. What did you father rip out from the garden in front of the rectory?

7. _____ die and only you feel guilty.

8. You plant _____ to spite you neighbors who still believe in lawns.

9. Only the _____ knew a fire was going to take the row houses. They gossiped all night. You could hear them. You put a pillow over your head.

10. Who keeps the lawn from being heterosexual?

11. Where do they speak your name like a prophecy?

12. _____ weep with pollen, trying to tell you they have a merry-go-round and it is just for you. You write your name in the gold dust on your windshield.


Robin Gow is a trans poet and young adult author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry books, an essay collection, Middle-Grade and YA novels in verse, including A Million Quiet Revolutions (FSG Books for Young Readers, 2022). Gow's poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, Poet Lore, and Yemassee.