three dots.
Rash,
Orion’s belt…
Not
love but inflammation.
Wasp sting.
Constellation.
WALLFLOWER
Near the dissolving edge of the garden party,
a tulip dives up slowly
from below ground, against gravity.
It’s like a little-watched sporting event on rewind
at a bar no one goes to, those pink-tinged feet
a single bullet bound for heaven
while the whole remainder of the universe swims on,
undisturbed, in its habitual direction.
Now someone presses ‘pause.’
Stuck upside-down, a foot shy
of solid ground and wearing nothing
but the wind’s leotard,
the tulip must turn her feet into a head,
her mind into toes.
She begins by rooting her fingers
under the heavy metal cabinet of the earth.
Her torso is as spare as the twine between
two tin cans. Now the other end is talking,
or trying to. Listen, and you might barely hear
the arches of her feet
rehearse the embouchures of speech
surreptitiously to the air.
You are right to be suspicious.
By the time her eyesight rights itself,
she’ll be a periscope spying for the underground.
She’s building a subterranean fortress
lit by multiplying bulbs and
powered solely by the stationary cyclone
of her mental gymnastics.
The breeze is her own personal brand
of highly flammable hairspray.
She’s shrewdly packed her appetite
in one of those green tortoiseshell valises.
When the party goes shits-up, her getaway
car will come on tiptoe.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
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