Skunk Cabbage

Looming up from a mossy stage
comes a horned headdress,
audience screaming as they glimpse
their death metal hero rising from below,
dry ice steaming and SKUNK CABBAGE
flashing in fat red lights,
the name a gas attack on everything lovely, 
this plant like a tiny Viking ship
surging onto the beachhead,
a whole squad of them pushing up 
the marsh’s guts with their
purple egg teeth, crowbars wedging 
apart this gray fatigued macrame 
of dead reeds to make way for bloody spring.

Skunk Cabbage

Josh Jacobs