Orchid

 

Orchid

 

We were walking talking about how erotic

certain flora were especially tropical

fruits & so who wouldn’t see a mango as

a woman’s breast and that stem end her

areola her rough used-up nipple?  To me

 

that’s an intelligent design.  To make a people

crave the flaying & impetus of their own

lips into the electric flesh & come away rashed

ravished & having ravished.  Take this lady

slipper I say: look & see her rising up, hemlock/oak

 

sprill & leaf skirt quieting all this time she spends

in her cellar-dark conjuring sisters’ talk with urges

with dormancy with aching complacency until

the convocation stage is placed & made to wait

until all the guest tickets checked are ushered

 

to their rained-on seats.  It’s as if so much

waiting is so much life going by not being

seen I mean heaps and heaps of life passed over

and so what’s a fruit to do?  Or an orchid? 

Yoohoo!  You Who!

 

And can’t we just gawk at those balls because

honestly it’s only a plant.  And not a shoe

at that.  It’s a simple veiny sack bending the stem

they’re grown on & beholding to—but who knows

what punk botanist was the first to call

 

this bit of blossom a lady’s slipper?  Clearly,

what?  Was he out of his cromedome with desire?

In his field all those weeks seeing? Did he watch

rough leaf litter part with its lid of dormancy

and watch her crowning into the sun summoning

 

the rain, to see what was kept below it all, hidden

from fingers just itching to cup the underneath

to quicken with his breath his tongue his lip?