“Late Summer in the Anthropocene,” a Poem by Marcus Wicker
From the Collection Dear Mothership
& our hibiscus is on that bullshit again.
You know the story. She picked us. Date night
at the roadside nursery. The one made entirely
of good vibes & floor-to-ceiling chain link,
so that sometimes, with any luck & clear
skies—when the air quality index glows a pale tangerine—
little golden squares of Kraft Cheese light melt honey
bees, snake plants & hostas; the ordinary ferns
hanging tough; melt me & my love in a gooey, tropical
gladness. Hibiscus Child sang to us from the parking lot:
Wouldn’t I look peachy on your withered deck?
Don’t I deserve ceramic turquoise views
& Whole Foods fertilizer? A daily minute of
attention with a 9-Pattern Garden Hose Nozzle? Middle kid
in a potted triptych, Hibiscus Child can be a bit much.
But she’s honest. Opens up, then closes, pointedly.
Flaunts her heart’s coral needs with a gaudy
audacity I am famously bad at. Like, Love me, motherfucker
lest we both perish of heatstroke! Love, it’s
late. Summertime & the living is halogen.
But you & me, we are perishing gracefully
as two sentry gardenia bushes flanking a flugelhorn tree
fashioned from rose-gold blooms. Impervious to inclement
grief, rising seas, & the separatist hurricanes of history.
Drought-resistant & gleaming, the two of us
up early, watering in record heat. Me in my cloud-
colored robe misnaming the flowers,
hoping to see you beam. Good morning, Fernie Sanders.
Little Pothos Bill. Rise & shine, Morgan Treeman. Little
Cactus Everdeen. Sometimes peril imperils itself. I can see that now.
When the affected acclimate. When the veil between
backyard garden & the inferno is sheer,
you learn to fix your focus on the roots. Love,
in this erstwhile fire, this halcyon season, we are proof.
_______________________________
From Dear Mothership by Marcus Wicker. Copyright © 2026. Available from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Marcus Wicker
Marcus Wicker is the author of three books of poetry: DEAR MOTHERSHIP, Silencer, and Maybe the Saddest Thing, selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, The Fine Arts Work Center, and Cave Canem. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and Poetry Magazine. He is an Associate Professor and the Orgill Chair of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches in the MFA program.
