Avoid & Avoid & Avoid
Body
rising from the wreck of the body, I am asking only
for a motive. I.E.,
the impulse of the temp employee
to idly read papers marked Confidential. When whalers
took down a right
whale (so named
because he was the “right” kind
to kill),
they stood in the raft of the corpse
while they stripped it. These bodies,
given the names of scythes,
monarchs, gods
& girlfriends. The Aurelia
takes the “right” body
off the coast of Prince Edward’s Island.
I am always the kind
who cuts out early. Others get busy
filling a sack, stripping
& naming: Inverse Desert,
College Tie,
Apartment Argument,
Dumb Scar. I am standing knee-deep
in the insides,
looking for a signed statement
or a precedent. Something
telling of any reason
besides avoid
& avoid & avoid.
Middleman
Often as not I kill the orchid
Roots fall awry & guileless damp
sweet like a child’s hair Unanswered
need: song milk good warm loam
the faucet’s hum Spotted thing dead
resigned to saint rot I’m given this
to tend for winter me
no knowledge of feeding or soil
tenderness in any of its forms
Folly
Lately I list food
instead of listing virtue. Mission
fig. Kale, radish,
clementine. There’s an epic on flowers
that resembles a list, written against fever
by a Frankish monk. Fever being cousin
to mania, I listen: balm
of lesser celandine, fennel tincture,
oil of roses. If there’s anything I know to do,
it’s how to grind a bulb
to pulp. It’s April
and the pansy is heartsease. Young man’s fancy
turns to what? I‘ve seen the blight,
a startled gap. You hear stories:
diabetics wake to find the dog,
gnawing a dead foot. I wait to learn
where it ends. Black hellebore
for infection. Look here: the monk plants
a garden. His list was one of salves,
or of the devil’s features. In either case,
a fit of pique.
Antonina Palisano is a poet, an amateur archivist, and an MFA candidate at Boston University. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review, Electric Cereal, Washington Square, Winter Tangerine Review, and the Bellevue Literary Review, among others. She lives in Medford, MA.