Why Plant Poison
In your life, in your art, in your yard
A few days ago, Alicia Silverstone was rightfully roasted for picking an unknown fruit out of a stranger’s gated garden and eating it. It wasn’t deadly poisonous, as some first claimed, but it was still the mildly poisonous Jerusalem cherry.
Don’t eat out of a stranger’s garden, any witch or cursed townsperson can tell you that, especially if the garden is deliberately fenced off and closed. But another question that hasn’t really been raised is: why plant something you know is toxic?
Jerusalem cherry is also called “winter’s cherry.” It looks like a cherry tomato if you squint hard enough, which may have caused the actor’s confusion. It might hurt your stomach, but it won’t kill you. Still, why take the risk and deliberately lace your front yard with it?
Why do we plant poison? Why do we love people who hurt us?
Poison is pretty, and honestly, don’t underestimate the importance of lovely. In the dreary winter, it might be nice to have a pop of red and orange. See also: poinsettias.
Poison can be medicine. There’s sometimes a very thin line between plants that help and plants that can kill in too large of quantities or in the wrong dose, or if the wrong part of the plant is utilized, or used in the wrong way, like arnica (put it on your bruise, never in your mouth).
We eat a lot of poison—just the part of the poison plant that doesn’t hurt, like tomatoes, or food that is cooked or roasted rather than raw, like cashews and fiddlehead ferns. People love rhubarb pie. I personally am deadly allergic to the stalks, but everyone is to the leaves, which contain oxalic acid. That can cause kidney damage.
Why do we plant poison? Why do we love people who hurt us? Why do we create in forms that betrayed us? A longtime dear friend, someone I first met when I was on tour for my first book of poems, Ohio Violence, told me he knows multiple people who’ve stopped writing poems because the culture is toxic. Bad teachers, bad apples. Back-biting.
I kind of stopped because of that, and I kinda just wanted more people to read my work? I always wanted to write novels, even though (or perhaps especially because) fiction is a genre I never studied, unlike poetry and nonfiction. But I still like poetry, still read it, still have a whole unpublished other book of it, despite the harm the poetry community and poetry academia has caused.
And then there’s the poison path. To research for one of my novels, unpublished so far—fall feels like its submission season—I read and loved a little red book called Plants of the Devil.
There, and in other books, I learned about the poison path: the tract of studying noxious plants. But it’s also an idea—that some are prone to running across these plants everywhere, and seeking out poison in other areas of their lives, like talking openly, not judging others, and knowing anything is possible, even hell. Sounds familiar.
We love what we love. Sometimes, it’s poison.
A Spell
It’s honey medicine time, at least in Ohio where I live. If you have goldenrod blooming, grab a fistful and shove it, leaves and all, in a mason jar. Fill the jar with local honey (it has to be local to you if you want help with your allergies), and seep, turning the jar upside down every now and then. After about 4 weeks, filter the solution with cheesecloth, removing the plant parts. Store your goldenrod-infused honey in the fridge. A tablespoon or so is good for those allergies and seasonal colds.