nanette rayman

The Flower's Wasted Life

it needs to speak something
but all it has is racemes
which it stretches to Ursa Minor,
vast awnings of them
serrated periwinkle grogblossoms
to beg with

on bended knee
like Madame Butterfly
mandarin skirts flouncing
unhappily, on lawns of ox-tongue rivals,
of envious blades of grass
mute bees pilfering
her purple and sex away
toward dawn's denouement.