The Structure of a Flower: Sepal
In water a sung note
might bloom as singular,
cellular organism. A snowflake
or other molecular nuance
of beauty. Invisible to the naked eye
is air. Invisible to each mouth
a bio-language. To tongue
is to root, end-stopped. The
epiglottis of the bulb orbiting,
silent. And what of flowering?
What of sounding forth toward
echo of sounding board, we call
horizon. Sighing out human
message, guttural and beastly
miseries. Dear starlight.
The nebula burning back,
reverberating back as each I
recedes to seed each asking.
The Structure of a Flower: Ovary
That goddess was once a girl,
was once wounded on the steps
on her way to the temple.
Her own temple bleeding into
her eye as the men laughed.
As the men tore at her dress
covering her in rapt saliva.
Their salve a brutal nuance,
of annunciation. This ritual practice
they called Godly, they claimed mythic
in order to sanctify slaying her.
slow, slow, slow, slow, slow
multiplicity of organism
seeding of blood slow slow
slow slow slow seeding
That goddess was once a word,
and the word for that goddess
was girl. And she was not o-shaped,
not open or agape. She was swarming
or fissured. Indented as a way to speak
deeper than surfaces. As a huntress
she was wild-eyed and ravishing. No other
atom dare approach uninvited. Lest he be
gutted. She was not “girl-like,” not pink
and tied up with ribbons or rope. She was
volcanic, triumphant. Named woman. Named garden.
And the person who named her was herself.
Andrea Rexilius is the author of Sister Urn (Sidebrow, 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011). She is Core Faculty in Poetry, and Program Coordinator, for the Low-Residency Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing at Regis University. She also teaches in the Poetry Collective at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.