Doing
Laundry on Sunday
So
this is the Sabbath, the stillness
in the garden, magnolia
bells drying damp petticoats
over
the porch rail, while bicycle
wheels thrum and the full-breasted tulips
open their pink blouses
for
the hands that pressed them first
as bulbs into the earth.
Bread, too, cools on the sill,
and
finches scatter bees
by the Shell Station where a boy
in blue denim watches oil
spread
in phosphorescent scarves
over the cement. He dips
his brush into a bucket and begins
to
scrub, making slow circles
and stopping to splash water on the children
who, hours before it opens,
juggle
bean bags outside Gantsy’s
Ice Cream Parlor,
while they wait for color to drench their tongues,
as
I wait for water to bloom
behind me—white foam, as of magnolias,
as of green and yellow
birds
bathing in leaves—wait,
as always, for the day, like bread, to rise
and, with movement
imperceptible,
accomplish everything.
***
Early
Cascade
I
couldn't have waited. By the time you return
it
would have rotted on the vine.
So
I cut the first tomato into eighths,
salted
the pieces in the dusk
and
found the flesh not mealy (like last year's)
or
bitter,
even
when I swallowed the green crown of the stem
that
made my throat feel dusty and warm.
Pah.
I could have gagged on the sweetness.
The
miser accused by her red sums.
Better
had I eaten the dirt itself
on
this the first night in my life
when
I have not been too busy for my loneliness—
at
last, it comes.
***
Evening
Primrose
Oenothera
biennis
Early adopter, familiar of vespertine
temporal specialists, itinerants:
who said your life would be easy? Chance
encounters, chancy neighborhoods, the lean
ground nothing cultivated will possess. But you,
night-bloomer, all strings of dubious exes, loose
ends, unabashedly seedy—you need no excuse.
This is simply what you do.
Daze them with perfume, bombshell;
daylight’s gaudy attractants are nothing to you.
Instead, take moonlight to the next level; take the dunes,
parking strips, waste ground that, for the right body—well,
presents the perfect opportunity. Herb of the X
chromosome: you know stigma. You don’t care.
Wherever the ground’s disturbed, you’re there,
brash, sticky with longing, a complex
quadruply branching ripple-effect array
of balanced-lethal genes and a flair for risk.
You know why you are here, let no one say
otherwise, heterotic odalisque;
X marks the spot, and hot things happen next;
slippery, brimming inner places; oils surefire
for increasing suppleness and desire
and damn the consequences, baby;
they’re on your turf now.
Amy Glynn
About this poem:
"The collection from which this poem is excerpted is a
riff on ancient botanical and pharmacological volumes (Theophrastus,
Pliny, Galen, etc). I've always been fascinated by the echoes between
the properties of herbs and trees and flowers and various human drives
and patterns and experiences. Evening primrose is a weed with some
unique reproductive tactics, which I found interesting because it has a
long and well-vetted reputation for improving female fertility. Its
unusually-shaped stigma even looks like a big X, as if the plant is
advertising its usefulness for female (x-chromosome) complaints.
Coincidence? Paracelsus would probably have said there's no such thing."
—Amy Greacen - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23597#sthash.wdNAqzWd.dpuf
About this poem:
"The collection from which this poem is excerpted is a
riff on ancient botanical and pharmacological volumes (Theophrastus,
Pliny, Galen, etc). I've always been fascinated by the echoes between
the properties of herbs and trees and flowers and various human drives
and patterns and experiences. Evening primrose is a weed with some
unique reproductive tactics, which I found interesting because it has a
long and well-vetted reputation for improving female fertility. Its
unusually-shaped stigma even looks like a big X, as if the plant is
advertising its usefulness for female (x-chromosome) complaints.
Coincidence? Paracelsus would probably have said there's no such thing."
—Amy Greacen - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23597#sthash.wdNAqzWd.dpuf