THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
Family of madder
and bedstraw, leather leaves
whorled. The Easter gardenia next door
is dying. Frost-killed petals
darken and crease. My neighbor’s face
aged into the landscape of her youth:
Sicilian hillsides fissured
by summer drought.
She plants rosemary for remembrance;
sweet peas for departure; marigolds, grief.
Leaves seedlings on my porch-step
wrapped in Daily News.
She can’t tell me what they are
or what they need. Forty years here,
English has never taken root
on her tongue.
Lungwort? Bloodroot? Dead nettle?
Latin names escape me. My father
would have known. He is in the zone now
where nothing grows.
TWO PHOTOGRAPHS BY LADY CLEMENTINA HAWARDEN (c.1857)
1. Tableau Vivant
Emptied of objets, andirons, antimacassars
layered in other rooms
like silt, the universe is a parlor emptied
of everything but daughters
orbiting in accordance
with Mother’s vision. Unseen sun,
she appears as ghosting,
a flare of white at edge
of frame, spinning
images out of glass
and ether. Visible
only through her muses,
costumed as goddesses
and boys, posed
in contemplation
or half-asleep, drugged
on collodion fumes,
maternal elixir
of silver, cyanide,
rain.
2. Still Life with Girl
London hovers
above her shoulder,
in the mirror, out
of reach. Embalmed
in afternoon, Her Lady’s
namesake, Clementina
pulls aside a heavy drape,
raises a dagger
of light – why,
we can’t decipher.
All that’s known
is what
we see: stars
on the wall.
Glint Literary Journal 