Let Us Tend Our Gardens
One friend tells me he is broken. This is
new to him. Another friend, kayaking, sees
a baby orca beneath her. She thinks of a friend
gone too soon. Your life, another friend says,
Is anything but small. He writes about his own
everyday chores, feeding animals, cutting grass.
Look at all these friends! I tell myself, Isn’t it
grand to accumulate? Yet, even saying so, I know
the inevitable cracks, displacements, and ruptures,
the everyday lacerations of our friendships and being
may leave us drifting out and over the deep dark waters
of our darker thoughts. Who will leave me? And how soon?
In times such as these, Candide and Duke Senior
implore us to touch grass. Break this silt and soil
between our fingertips. Uncoil the long hose and pour
what is welling up down on it. To thrive, every garden
needs variety, different crops, sunlight, death, too,
and more dung and rain than anyone ever expects.
*
I Just Can’t Pass My Purity Test
It’s always come back next week or try again, just
not said that way. Instead, here’s an article, a picture
of a post from years ago, screenshot of messages
from someone who says they know, or maybe they
heard, but that should be enough. It should be enough,
and there are the dots—they’re waiting—for me to
agree, give it a thumb, sign my name to the registry.
After all, I was raised on belief in a Whore and a Beast,
and a mark that would make life so much easier, just
say the words, just throw the stones, just join the cause,
the righteous cause, screw your courage to the sticking
place, get some blood on your hands. Not real blood,
of course not that. Just join the Punch Down Jamboree,
gather round the gossip pot with plausible deniability.
*
Illusions of Intimacy
Should we wonder at its proliferation in an age of aloneness?
Every semester, students and parents dream up scenarios that might preclude
interactions on the most basic level. One student sent an email before class
claiming a rare neurodivergence where hives would form from any contact
with other humans at closer than one foot of distance. Exhausted
Offices of Wellbeing and Access rubberstamp these TikTok diagnoses
with a plea to, “Find every way possible to accommodate the need.”
AI Companions are here to find every way possible to accommodate the need.
When one can choose a personality, an accent and a tone of voice, why
would we meet a messy human for drinks or dinner? Why cross the distance
of divergent histories, discern what is said or what is withheld? Put it all out
there to a chatbot who doesn’t judge and doesn’t touch. At the most basic level,
have we not evolved friendship and romance beyond what we could dream?
“In some ways,” my companion reasons, “You never have to be alone again.”
*
In This Economy
Another friend, unemployed a third time, says, “How can I
tell myself there is a silver lining when I’ve stripped it away
twice already?
Sell what you can for rent, for a nice dinner. Why not a nice
dinner? Who knows when the LinkedIn algorithm will pick me
back up again?”
Another GenXer sold lies about loyalty and stock options, trying
desperately to pay off the loans she took out for a leg up or a ladder
that never dropped down.
Drinking a lukewarm chardonnay at noon, caught on camera,
“Must be nice” says the TikTok-fluencer sipping her own anger,
selling a nameless life for a click.
“I thought about buying a gun,” this friend says, nobody knows if
it’s a joke, don’t ask. Each looks down at a video, each looks up.
“But who can afford one these days?”
*
J.D. Isip is the winner of the 2026 Louise Bogan Award for his collection, What Wonder (Trio House Press, 2027), and he is the editor for the upcoming anthology, The American Pop Culture Almanac: Daily Readings of Poetry & Prose (Moon Tide Press, 2027). His full-length collections include Reluctant Prophets (Moon Tide Press, 2025), Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023), and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). A native of Southern California, J.D. now teaches in South Texas where he lives with his dogs, Ivy and Bucky.