Bittersweet Nightshade - 10/21/25 by Jakob Krey

We can only have so many concerns I suppose,

by back of the envelope, just a few places at once.

Thankfully, our exasperation has a physical limit.

Listen to me! Wandering thoughts march on now

as I stumble over the dark gaps of modernity.

An affirming, brisk, fall gust passing over

machine blown leaves resting on astroturf.

Hear me! My scathing rains beating harder now.

Drowning discognizance of consumers, sending

sorrows to roadkill that they pay for by the plate.

Inhumanity, selfish crawling bugs in the detritus

of a forever unturned composter.

God! It pours out of me, this tired sickness

Mountains of waste bubbling beneath shiny grass,

I find myself in a garden of endless weeds.

My mounting frustrations are a bounded edifice

but my rage will never end.

Jakob Krey has spent his entire life in central Wisconsin. Immersed in the underrated natural beauty and history of the state, he seeks to reflect his personal experiences in ecological restoration and local historical research in poetry that has a "found" aspect. He is influenced in this work by thinkers and writers spanning from Aldo Leopold to David Foster Wallace. Here, he attempts to reconcile historical longing and the mythos of the American landscape with the encroachment of blighted modernity.