Two Poems by Flower Conroy
Ritual is as Ritual Does
to be inside the head of a cloudhead
the (unending but not infinite) luxury of having
aches acres to keep
up after
even in winter the grass threatening to take over
, banana
spiders webbing trees into remembering ::
the razor the water the letter the cellos inside the rope’s fiber
instruments of a self-
(unfinished)…
once but not
as a compliment She was called a buxom-blue-
eyed-she-devil & truth
be told it was
the she-devil
making Her
blush as if She’d just won a hot-
dog eating contest & first prize was a wet-eyed belled chamois
it was like snow falling on the Antarctic sea
She could wipe
the counter & not two moments later a smudge
of cuttlefish a spill of daffodil some crumbs
like the center of gravity She felt haunted
until She realized She was
the ghost; then it was afternoon cups
of ginger-infused, anti-
climactic tea
while the world outside burned
& froze, rose & sunk
cyclic, gyre, Plink-O, contronymed with other
matters of the heart
She Burns the Moon
Incense outside because otherwise
it stinks like soap
but in the air
the open air
of outside it’s a still-
life a dragon-smear of an orchid-like
flower a ghastly gorgeous grey-washed periwinkle
jarring up against a bloodswirl of candy-headed
hips—not her hips but those
of
the overwrought
roses—do they still
move you—the roses the roses the roses ?
what She believes is a bat has just kited
across the yard the length it takes a bride
to walk the bridge to the aisle
in the trees
clump the wisteria jewel-like
now the soft clamber of the wind
chimes as disturbed evening
descends into pond
She’s hot as velvet
when it rains
,, it s-
pores it queefs frogsong
LGBTQ+ writer, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet Laureate, Flower Conroy’s the author of “Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder” (winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition) and “A Sentimental Hairpin" (a Small Press Distribution Bestseller). Her third collection, “Greenest Grass (or You Can’t Keep Killing Yourself & Not Expect to Die)” has won the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize and will be published later in 2022. Her poetry will/has appeared in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner and others.
