Midnight Orchid

Two Pieces

Trier Ward

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.

Flower

Tonight, on a petal’s precipice,

I do not desire doors open.

I wish to crawl along a wet stem

and fall into the cup of my words

where the effervescent poison

surrounds me, bubbles into

airways- my own fragrance,

heavy pheromones, funeral 

garlands, Snow White’s torn skin,

thorn’s favorite innocent-

not a symbol of love,

this Rose Red,

an insatiable climber, a thief of light,

destined to drown in folds of darkness

between the 

bright pink lurid lush

bait.

Impossible to capture alive-

impossible to sell, free to see.

I do not desire doors open.

I close my hungry mouth.

Trier Ward is a mother, poet, scientist, and aspiring crazy cat lady. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and her interests include social activism and wildlife rehabilitation. She likes all animals except for roaches. Roaches can go to hell.