Published in Issue 64.1: Winter 2025
You can purchase our Winter issue here
So many people are inside a rose’s becoming.
I speak to those who grow and send it.
In the shop, shades of psychotropic green repeat themselves
and I find colorful faces everywhere. A mouth
with the voice of sky asks, Where is your mind right now?
I reply, I keep it close but time allots everything.
I could starve something lovely, no water, no sun,
no fertilizer, a neglectful mother. Which would indebt
me to the fathers I discover everywhere.
In the cold, white room there are neither landscapes
or consequences while flesh comes and goes,
gossiping about today’s mayhem.
To eat or drink too much, to droop,
to brown or bruise or lose too much foliage.
I touch the rot but can’t shrug it away,
distaining collapse or senescence. I entertain
too many catastrophic thoughts, which flowers
don’t share, trains colliding, politicians half listening,
the world too wet or too dry. I wait for
everything to arrive, including a little stab.
I’ll be right back, I tell a customer whose head
is shaped like a chrysanthemum. I don’t like
his grasping hands. I go to the back room,
where there’s not enough time to reverse or assemble
what’s been done or what’s strewn on tables.
I see what minutes can do to something once alive.
I touch truth but vaguely grasp beauty, even
surrounded by it in a swarming, yellow light.
Outside, the noise of cars and conversations.
The city swallows what’s thrown into it and continues.
We all have our own methods. I reach for,
touch, smell, see something’s origin.
In this city, weeds are insistent through pavement.
From the tiny bits who-knows-what will flourish.
My hands are fragrant with daisies and
daffodils. I pick up things and let them go
because we can’t keep anything for long
except for rocks and violence. I pluck
scissors to trim and design. They open
and close, clasp and unclasp, as if flowers
wear costumes and need help.
As a child I ran with a sack over my head,
pretending to be someone else, although my voice
couldn’t hide who I was. I kept my hands
in my pockets, knowing what they were capable of.
One day a boy grabbed me from behind, threw me
in a lake so I had to choose myself or drown.
Ferns have too many syllables. Cattails drink
more water. The Corpse flower, Titan
arum, has a terrible odor. Roses are vain and
chatty. But bouquets gather texture, color,
aroma, and shape. These clusters are briefly collectable.
In the cold room I glance over my shoulders
to see what’s happening. It’s usually the kind
of action that could later be forgiven.
At home I own no flowers or plants.
No pets. No husband or children.
This is a time of bad weather,
where snow or heat appear aloofly,
every breath is frigid and white or too hot.
Wind is unbridled, and storms are unpredictable.
Weather has learned to rummage through
its bags of tricks, damaging and changing.
We feel as though we are always dissolving.
At the shop I watched a seed flourish
into an enormous sunflower, staring out
the window. I could hug it,
its face larger than my own.
Stars, with their garlands of light,
avoid the city, but we still want to conquer them
and then offer them to each other.
Petals are bright, peeled things. Sun inspects
what it touches, assembles what to grow.
This world is hurt and then healed by
episodic green leaves. I am immersed
in so much brief beauty, a storm filled with
narcissus, a department store mannequin
wearing a dress made of blue and pink florets,
a hat, a swing, a woman’s head made of flowers.
Completely pliant and domesticated.
What is a love song without smooth, delicate fingers?
What does beauty mean without tragedy? Am I wasting
time stuffing leaves and stems into my anxious mouth?
Some plants cure and others break us. I am animal old,
sloughing my skin, regenerating it thinner, more fragile.
My roots are haphazard and unsteady. But at night,
in the dark, my missing companion is photosynthesis.
What would all this flora do without me?
I will make you into something appealing, I whisper.
And I do, often with a scissor or a knife.
Just who’s idea of attractiveness?
In the cold room I’m usually still, silent, alone as if
I’m not there or in the presence of something overwhelming.
Without me, foliage could proliferate, sprawl throughout
the world, an alluring wilderness, built on all that came
before it. Greenery asks, What is it you need?
I’m not sure, beyond someplace larger, more time,
food, air, someone with stories, a strong dollop of sunlight.
In winter, in the chilly room, blue, yellow, and pink blossoms
display their dark shadows splattered on a wall like a gray painting.
Red flowers are the color of blood. Green feels as if
it disappears, fading with the frigid temperature, but it doesn’t.
What would I do without all these colors?
Some days are more human than others.
Sometimes we kill what we can’t use.
Other times we propagate what we like.
A customer inquires, How do I keep this alive?
I explain each plant’s grievances, happiness, distress,
and purpose. It’s individual needs.
Occasional events occur and occur.
I am dancing and singing to music.
Every season is another face. We praise and thank,
exaggerate ourselves at celebrations.
I limp away from a party, a nosegay with posies
clutched in one hand. At the bus stop
a tall weed enthusiastically knocks at my knee.
A house surrounded by boxes of red geraniums stares
judgmentally. I fasten my flower bunch to a bench. Leave.
I dreamt that a cloud-tumbled sky rained dandelions.
I collected handfuls and stuffed them into my pillowcase.
The dandelions spread throughout the world and couldn’t be contained.
I’m learning to be my own flower, coming alive
in the quietest way. I get down on my knees
in my tiny yard, my feet burying themselves.
I wonder at the shape I create above the ground.
But I’m not a flower, although my favorites
have ruffles, eat insects, are erotic-looking,
form a confetti of red and purple knotty blooms,
and have long necks like question marks.
There is little beauty in me, only secrets and joy.
I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
No one knows what to do with me. I do with myself.
I put one foot in front of another.
My smile grows again and again
against the shop window glass. I swallow seed-shaped
pills. I spread aging, brown-tipped rose petals
on the table in the cold room. I consider
sleep, life, resiliency. Returning to the front room,
I press my nose inside a tumult of unspooling,
yellow blossoms and their perfume festoons me.
They instruct me. I am still wanting but not waiting.
Read more by purchasing our Winter 2025 issue, available in print and digital forms.
Laurie Blauner is the author of nine books of poetry, five novels, and a creative nonfiction book called I Was One of My Memories. A new poetry book called Come Closer won the 2022 Library of Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander Press. She has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, The Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, BOMB, Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, South Dakota Review, among other magazines.
