Tomatillos

Vincent Hostak

August 18, 2024

It seems a shame to cast away the husks

an extra skin they wore while ripening   

even through late summer’s brutal heat.

Tomatillos cling to heat all their short lives

from the trellis to the simmering pot

growing smooth, tart, stinging the taster’s tongue.

Their paper flesh is much too thin to pen 

a sonnet upon, or I know I’d try.

Fourteen lines on a tiny paper lantern

rising in the breeze of a kitchen fan,

floating past the skylight, landing on a chair.

That’s more like justice, a better end. Go now,

join the coffee grounds and shellfish scraps.  

Make friends of strangers in the compost bin.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.