Poetry Series: "the daylily / four" by Dameion Wagner

Your dirty hands rifled

through the clumps that

numbered in the dozen. Sifting

through the strident thistle.

You knew how to avoid the

softly sharp barbs, white like

the coarse hairs of a dying

woman, imperceptible except

for the singe of their touch.

That  did not stop you.  It is

easy to find the tension in the

root. The give. The take. The

pulling and the cutting is

inconceivable as wishing on a

stray eyelash or seeing a

monarch still in November. 

Let the day end as it began —

in blue violet.

---

Dameion Wagner lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Tilde: A Literary Journal, Cider Press Review, and most recently Bear Review. His reviews appear in Heavy Feather Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. He was nominated for the Sundress Publications '2020 Best of the Net Anthology,’ is a 2018 recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Prize (“Momma's Boy,” poets.org), and won Miami University’s 2017 Jordan- Goodman Poetry Prize.  Milk & Cake Press published his first full-length collection, Bird Wild (2020).