from The Art of Escape
The sleepy flower feels
her dizzy hour begin
slipping, the dissolution-
soul’s malnutrition
from tainted earth and
drunk moonbeams that
do not let chlorophyll flow.
Her violet reds gather in folds.
Bloom is beginning.
She can’t wake up
to greet the sun.
She’ll be a funeral rose,
brightening death.
The shy harlot of a staid garden,
transient, pollen like gold dust
on swollen lips, soft to resist
insect protuberances that dip
into sweet resinous nectar
kept secret from all but one,
the shadow son.
He brings a steel gun of
ultraviolet to coax her to bloom
at night with gamma frequencies
beyond man’s sight, blast into
fractals, a queen of
psychedelia that no one else
sees, her arms multi-fold, spraying
petals through galaxies, her
fragrance freed to the sky,
intoxicating midnight bees,
The world inverses its photography.
She screams her true name
in his neon forest dreams and
he keeps it secret. He knows if he
takes a flower it dies, it cannot
breathe, so he leaves. The sun
opens a wary eye and the day’s
disbelief begins. She closes off,
draws up, enfolds her spells to
sleep through the dangers of light-
each day a reckoning before
each night.
“Midnight Orchid”first appeared in Litmora Literary Magazine (Issue 3: Flower Language Edition, May 2024).
