The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 12/5/2008)

[RetroLounge]

The Tulip Thief, Mi Amor

At first it was an ember; its glow I nursed
like a welt after the open wound you left
in the row. Anger, yes, but what is anger
if not passion? Sparks, if not chemistry?
A lab of mulch, calyx, and bitterroot. Your
neat snips—kitchen shears?—selective: not
the first in the row, yet the second and today
the third. My pretty girls, my charming
darlings. Oh, the hours I conjured their hue
of red—for cheerful and its stain of glamour.
Tulip, native of Asia, sister of Geisha—
petals demure, dainty and closed
each evening. I've contemplated a linger
in the eaves with a shotgun. A friend suggests
a garden hose. And like a misunderstood lover,
I harbored plans—one with a black alder
and epoxy—discarded for mercy. Your ache
for beauty much like my own dogma. I know
the gasp of a red petal on the asphyxiated
heart—how it jumps! Perhaps, your wife
has packed and paid for a ticket to the gas
station where the attendant grows iris—
so violet—clearly, a man who knows
how to tend. You saw my tulips and thought
to dazzle her back with scarlet; it's the true nature
of violet, pure. I like to think my tulips save
your marriage—you're off to Niagara Falls
for a wet second honeymoon and surprise
baby. This, I understand. Sometimes we need
reckless acts to see each other again.

Suzanne Frischkorn

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Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo, (2008), and Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver for the Aldrich Poetry Award (2005). Lit Windowpane, her first full-length book, is now available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Her poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming in Ecotone, Indiana Review, Diode, No Tell Motel, MiPOesias, Salt Flats Annual, and the anthology Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems, part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet Series (Knopf, 2007) From 2001 to 2005 she served as an editor for Samsära Quarterly. She is the recipient of a 2007 Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.

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:hi:

RL