Bloom -- Version 1
The hibiscus bloomed coral
today: frost on the windowpane, sky of grey cirrus. It burst
into life parched and longing,
alone. The other buds
already dropped to the floor.
I tried to save them, I swear
I put them in the pink plastic cup,
tried to coax them open with water
from the tap.
Perhaps the water wasn’t good
enough, perhaps it was all any of us
could muster. Still, they drowned
– of course they drowned,
they were all gauze-like hesitation
turned slime-slick, and heavy.
Their own blooming kept them
locked too tight, turned
the water green, essence,
useless, of kelp.
Today, the news, again:
I sit on my couch and cry,
wonder how this is the world
we’ve woken up to, the world
that’s been here with us,
waiting for us, all along.
I taste salt long before the burst
of color catches my eye,
this hibiscus, singing
of undersea creatures,
of brightness, of bone.
It lifts itself – pink-tipped
stigma, golden filament, anthers
stretching above bright petals
on thin green stems,
such softness
reaching
toward the light.
Bloom -- Version 2
When I hear the news today, I sit
on my couch and cry. I know this
wonder well: how this is the world
we’ve woken up to, the world that’s been
here with us, waiting for us, all along.
Nearby, on my bookshelf, the hibiscus
winters, green leaves feathering
over dusty pot, dry leaves
dropped to the floor.
There, beyond eyeline
and buried hands,
I know what is: a solitary bud,
an aloneness that bears
repeating. Parched and longing,
coral petals tucked behind
gauzy hesitation, it is safe
from grey cirrus sky,
safe from how the morning frost
has etched a story across blades
of grass and balcony, across
the windowpane.
Before, there were others. I tried
to save them, swear I put them
in the pink plastic cup, tried
to coax them open with water
from the tap. They drowned – of course
they drowned, November is not
a month for nurturing. Still,
I second-guess: Perhaps
the water wasn’t good enough,
perhaps it was all any of us could muster.
Perhaps their own blooming kept them
locked too tight, turned the water green,
essence, useless, of kelp.
Today, I taste salt long before
the burst of color catches my eye,
a suddenness of warmth and glow,
suddenness of song. Here and now
are treble and hum, here and now,
a flutter: this hibiscus singing
of undersea creatures,
of brightness, of bone.
See it: how it lifts itself
– pink-tipped stigma,
golden filament,
anthers stretching
above bright petals
on thin green stems
such softness
reaching
toward the light.
Tick
I.
When my father calls the judge’s accuser
sleazy, I think of you, with your dropped
pants at the park in the doorway
of the men’s bathroom. I can still see
your brown eyes peeking from the collar
of your royal blue shirt, can still see
your limp dick hanging, like a circus
sideshow, eight feet from the shining
water fountain where I’d just slurped
and burbled. Emily turns quickly,
– “no, don’t look,” as if to protect me,
the danger of it all not quite landing
in my elementary head.
I’ve lost much of that encounter,
but I still remember how I reacted.
Do you –
“indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter”
– remember how a snort burst, unruly,
from my nose? I laughed then, as now, at inappropriate times, a reflex, a tick.
I think of this, the day after
the doctor’s testimony, the day I try
to bury a roiling in my heart
with trail runners under tree canopy,
me, skidding deer-like along root-rock
paths, away from my bubbling chest.
I stumble, skin scrapes
from swelling knee. I sit for a moment,
salt-lipped and startled, wailing,
no one to hear. And I think
of you, think of how
I laugh so often now,
and it is not the doctor’s voice, but mine,
and I pray for you, pray:
oh, how I hope
that short, sharp exhale has bound itself
to you, lodged itself inside you, tucked itself
tight, like the insects that latch, suck,
burrow into fur and skin. May it have bloomed
a bull’s eye, my laughter, streaked your pale
flesh red and blotching, seared itself
into the soft, grey architecture that sops
within the contours of your skull.
May it linger even now, my laughter,
bind itself to the marrow of your bones,
prey upon you, fester like the chiming
of church bells, curl inside you
like a snail inside a shell
too small to live in.
I laugh so often now.
How they mock
her memories,
how quickly they
dismiss her
sleazy.
II.
I ask my mother
“Did it happen?”
She says, “Yes.”
Perennials
If I had to trace a line
from that April to today,
I would draw it in red.
Crimson bellows too strange
for a baptism, but then blood
blooms different in every education.
red is red, is red, is red
1999: news from Colorado
reaches our keystone spring,
turns our faces the same shock
white as the slim inner petals
of a Rocky Mountain flower.
Sunward stretch of filament,
of anther, of pistil –
what future can you promise us,
with your dust of pollen?
red is red, is red, is red
2001: the SWAT team clears us
from the mute maroon
walls of the girl’s locker room.
Spring-like, we burst forth
from bathroom stalls, tumble
safe into the golden gymnasium,
climb bleacher steps the same
shade of dandelion as the raised
stamen of blue columbine.
red is red is red is red
That week we laid pink laurel
by the upturned lunch table,
by the lone abandoned shoe,
by the sling tied tight around
the cheerleader’s shoulder, bit
of lead now nestling close to bone.
red is red is red is red
Who are those that go
before us, rainwater holy
on their heads?
Pale-faced apertures,
ghostly petals – do you see?
How they vault tall on green
stalks, wave in the shadow
of brown mountains, survive
harsh winters, grow back year
after year after year?
What resurrection
goes unheard for so long?
red is red is red is red
Aspen quakes over open blossoms,
roots surface-close and spreading.
A teacher waits with brandished yardstick,
her students crouched behind her.
Sugar
in the sun tea slowly steeping
on the brown wooden deck, where you sat,
smoked cigarettes, gossiped with my mom,
made sure we never wandered too far
into the woods, for fear of snakes.
in the popsicles you bought
for us, orange and grape, dripping sticky
down our wrists, onto the cracked red paint
of picnic tables at the public pool, where
you slathered tanning oil on your skin,
and my mother worried that the sun
was turning me too pink.
in the name of the hill
the Sugar Bowl, tall, scooped like ice cream
where you took us sledding, the snow
powder-soft, up to your shins where
you stood next to the old oak,
helped us wedge ourselves snug,
onto bright plastic toboggans,
the angle of our deliverance so steep,
we shrieked, we felt like we were flying.
in the gas tank of the car,
your brother-in-law’s, where you poured it
when you found out he cheated on your sister.
How you laughed telling this story,
the one they left out of your eulogy;
somehow they knew he would show up
in his grey suit, long divorced,
sit in the back, pay his respects.
in the cream puffs, white wine
you gave us at your dining room table,
the last time I saw you, you trying so hard
to keep weight on, wrap muscle back
around your bones, cancer lurking silent
in your liver, in your pancreas,
waiting to break you down.
Land of the Midnight Sun
for Mary
How we love to limn the light, make it edible: call it honey, call it butter, lemon. Golden or sweet, acid or cream. The honey you brought us
from Alaska has clotted
in my cupboard, sugared crystals
hunching close – now,
these amber patterns,
now, this upturned jar.
The huckleberry tea
you brought from Glacier
soothes it viscous, eases
open, a soft blooming
down the throat
– I cannot swallow it.
I imagine you now in the small plane
you thought could kill you,
but didn’t.
I imagine you
swooning over water
and whalesong, over ice, ancient
and sea-green,
translucent. I imagine you now,
sunburst, cloudlight,
high above a glacier
that will never calve. Starfruit, nectar,
mirabelle plum
– how we long
for the word
to bring you back.
Interview and Transcript
Carolyn Keller is a writer, teacher, and traveler with a PhD in English from Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review and The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly. You can find her on Twitter at @tiabananas.