Acre Poem by Lisa Allen Ortiz

If we had one, I said, we could grow lettuce and peas
pumpkins and greens. In the winter we'd have beets,
green garlic and parsnips for soup. I'd get a few chickens
and two goats, an ostrich at first raised for meat then kept
as a pet because what kind of person could kill something like
that. We'd plant apricot trees and peaches, apples and a few beds
of berries, make a place for a pony, a cage
filled with lemurs, a crocodile pit
if company came. We'd have a vine-covered house
with moss on the steps, and a shed for hammers and nails.
We all want something you said, and I got what you meant.
Our apartment has high speed Internet access and green rugs
from West Elm. I have a pot of mint in the window and a view
of the sky and some grass and the roof of the building next door
where mornings I see on the peak black ravens and starlings all