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.