Allelopathy
P. Q. R. Anderson | Poetry
In which one plant exudes
chemicals to suppress another
species. The cunning violence
of red nature. See the chloro-
phyll fail, the vine etiolate:
God’s dubious acre, the acre’s
dubious god. How, now, we
have published toxicity. Still
days in winter, the photo-
chemical smog, rusty as marrow’s
own begun blood. Air comes
cold off the Benguela.
We should say ‘perishing’,
but for the length of a morning
it is sweet to breathe
rinsed air, that was once always
and is now respite. Snag
of the inhalation. Far out
across those dredged quadrants
and inland where the wheat
comes blue, we are all dying
of contrivance, molecular
plastics, of words that were once
beautiful as groundwater,
and rain, and shade, and sky.
P. Q. R. Anderson has published four volumes, Litany Bird, Foundling’s Island, a long poem In a Free State: A Music (“Destined to be a landmark in South African poetry” – J.M. Coetzee), and Night Transit (Dryad). He is the recipient of South Africa’s Thomas Pringle Prize for Poetry (2018) and the Sanlam Literary Award (2006), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He won the Witness Poetry Prize for 2026. Anderson teaches English at the University of Cape Town. His work has appeared in The London Magazine, Denver Quarterly, TEXT, The Rialto, New Contrast, New Coin, Stanzas, The Hopkins Review, Blue Earth Revue, Rougarou, Tears in the Fence, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Witness, and other magazines.