USA

rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu

HOUSE FLORA

Proliferation is abject:
wisps of retriever and cat, mint-stalks

filched from the garden with wild aster—
as in a spell. The least angle calculates

the fascinum: nos. of exceedingly small animals.
a spider with six eyes—

a lemon wheel, a pinch of thyme or duckweed,
when the tiniest adjustment thrills the scenery,

like snow.
To burrow, or conceal one’s body by closing the eyes

(as in hope’s invisibility),
like the actress on TV, who wants to be a size zero, gradually

cease to be distinguisha . . .
so my lover loves me for my vanishing nature for my

l air
h air . . .

and on the floor, a vulgar mulch.
Fuck silk and the hand-sewn leaves.

To re-build the dispersed arbor:
stirrups of a thin musculature, of vine, un-

articulated pinnings, a thistle
for the ear’s Chartres, plus a lot of errata, and thorns

I’ll gather in the hatched egg-cups, blue
with pearl dribble.

To disburse
is not to disburden, but to lick

the cat’s ear, like this:
descend

into small motherings. And these
are mundane: the waxen "o" of the doctor’s quick thermometer

in and out of my ear, like this;
or the needle nosed in by the quiet phlebotomist—

to relinquish company for the local tufts,
the exhalations, the spongiole,

when the land springs up.

PITCH

The cat accidentally sings through her throat
as some things, sleeping, sing.
The woman under insufficient ether
felt herself directly under God’s foot, tied to His lightening
and bended [sic] to His angles. On TV
the fictional officers compel grief.
Their lives are magnificent! Compared even
to the peacocks and the hatchlings,
to the ground flower, the lavender-white tree. Meanwhile
insurance refuses to cover a routine examination.
The house we rent faces a fine double cherry,
a pitted lawn, salted with papery, pink blossoms
and occasional refuse. The dreamer conceives of the little guy:
now you can find him at the corner bar
while the trees unpetal themselves
and the grackles pick,
and stems root upwards
through the dirt like throats.
An April exercise. I have no qualms
pitching dandelion in compost
though such acts contract with future pests. They come,
the ragged heads and bended stems,
with a stiff love, quotidian.

© All Copyright, Rebecca Reynolds.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.