Terrible Blooms. Melissa Stein

it hurt, does it

      bruise, would you hand

      me a nasturtium,

      its orange burnt bitter

      carnelian, mouthful

       oh where is that jewel

      Heir

      Tables heaped with meat

      and fruit. Plates laden

      with roasted juice and what lies

      leaking it. He grabs a fist

      of serviceberries and purples

      his lips. At the last

      she lay blue and bloated

      as a frog’s upturned belly

      in the moat. His reign

      stoppered in her. All the sapphires

      and gilt. All the chalices

      ensanguined. He commands

      snowbanks of ermine

      to line the crypt. Guard hairs

      glistering, ensiform. Murmur

      of underfur. An avalanche

      to keep them warm.

      Groundhog day

      i.

      Fat joy splayed on its belly

      eating everything green gives it.

      Fur fluffed and cresting

      like a crown.

      We go around like this,

      mowing up whatever we can

      and in our own ways, drowning.

      ii.

      Who am I to say

      this leaf is more delectable

      or this flower, that spreads like a gown?

      Let the groundhogs devour and burrow.

      Let green sustain the mouths.

      I can’t even control

      my own starving.

      Spine

      Cantilevered in blind heat:

      this lust in a field

      of grasses taller than

      a man. He told my body

      something it would never

      forget and I never

      saw him again.

      Weak in the knees

      is more than just a phrase;

      it’s a disease

      and I still can’t stand up straight.

      Lung

      Flounder’s eyes lie

      one side of its head.

      Tarantula can shatter

      falling centimeters.

      Sweet jabuticaba swells

      from trunk, not limb.

      Like snow in June, this white

      spot on your lung belongs

      to no one, being wrong.

      Dead things

      i.

      This is the season of dead things.

      Bat curled up on its back, frog broken open

      to the meat, a turtle’s pixelated shell.

      And all the frantic honeybees.

      As a child I daily encountered such death

      when the air was close or thundery.

      There was the flipping over,

      the poking things with sticks.

      Look what I found, smeared and bloated.

      Look what’s living in it.

      ii.

      Hawk stood along the path

      as I jogged past. He eyed me sharply

      but didn’t stir. His ankles had these surprising

      little cuffs. When I looked back

      he took off into a blur of coral tail, gray wing.

      He shrieks around the property

      to frighten small creatures into hiding

      and picks them off while they scurry.

      In this way his cry pierces doubly.

      iii.

      She was nearly gone

      by the time I went to see her.

      A nurse was dampening her lips

      with a coral triangle of sponge

      and she was rasping, a little louder

      when I sat next to her and told her I was there

      and loved her though who knows if she knew

      though they say they do. Her skin

      had grown a size too small. Her eyes

      that were ice blue were closed that day;

      because I’d missed my plane

      I missed their final opening.

      She died early the next morning.

      I held my mother’s hand through this

      though we hadn’t spoken in a year.

      I’m next, she said. I will be, too.

      Quarry

      As you slept

      I was thinking about the quarry,

      about light going deeper

      into earth, into rock, the hurt

      of light hitting layers

      that should be hidden,

      that should be buried,

      and how when it rained

      for a long time that absence filled

      with suffering, and we swam.

      London, Dresden

      In the classically laid out fountain koi

      slapped and gaped at the surface

      like misguided bathtub toys. Like mute

      prisoners. Like the abandoned overgrown

      goldfish they were. And even more so

      when the sky broke upon them,

      unleashing flowers of ice. The bodies

      took cover as best they could, as bodies do,

      within their medium. And the ice kept on falling,

      as long as there was ice to fall.

      Flower

      The ruler left a welted stripe;

      the