Wild Poppies
And how do you survive? Your long-throat,
your red-rag-to-a-bull head?
You rise heavy in the night, stars drinking
from your poppy neck.
Your henna silks serenade me
under the breadth of the Pyrenees.
You move like an opera,
open like sea anemones.
You are earth’s first blood.
How the birds love you.
I envy your lipstick dress.
You are urgent as airmail, animal-red,
Ash Wednesday crosses tattooed on your head.
Your butterfly breath
releases your scents, your secrets,
bees blackening your mouth
as your dirty red laundry
all hangs out.
'Wild Poppies' and 'The Unintelligible Conversation of Rhubarb’ from Tree Language © Marion McCready. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Eyewear Publishing, 2014.
And how do you survive? Your long-throat,
your red-rag-to-a-bull head?
You rise heavy in the night, stars drinking
from your poppy neck.
Your henna silks serenade me
under the breadth of the Pyrenees.
You move like an opera,
open like sea anemones.
You are earth’s first blood.
How the birds love you.
I envy your lipstick dress.
You are urgent as airmail, animal-red,
Ash Wednesday crosses tattooed on your head.
Your butterfly breath
releases your scents, your secrets,
bees blackening your mouth
as your dirty red laundry
all hangs out.
'Wild Poppies' and 'The Unintelligible Conversation of Rhubarb’ from Tree Language © Marion McCready. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Eyewear Publishing, 2014.
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