CASSIE DONISH

                                     



MODERN WEEDS

 

 

All humans are marvelous, themselves objects—

 

Move back and forth between them

 

Along crowded hallways, along

                                  coasts 

 

Brush hands

                       lightly

 

Don’t worry

            about silence

 

Continuous activity, all our fine blooms

               

Submerged, carried

         away—

 

Nurses, clipboards, flowers

 

Reality drunk on the scent

 

 

~

 

 

Like the asters, I bloom

                                irrationally

 

My arguments are late, my summers

                                                  unsound

 

I’ll try something else—

 

Occupying the world in a way

 

That surprises, but also

 

Seems to come from opportunistic

             displays

 

Of blue and pink horses

 

Stubborn naiveté

 

 

~

 

 

Convenience, a terminal rose

 

Split open, is attractive, but proves

 

Nothing—I prefer you, fireweed:

 

Rose-purple, striking, apparently

 

Disturbed—but beauty—

 

None of its elements

                             has any sense

 

The beautiful astronomy

                           

Can stop

 

Nothing

          leaves me broken

 

Like the memory of you breaking

                                          

Your skin

                    open

 

Yet to abandon the image—

 

Would I be blinded

  by such

 

 

~

 

 

Somersault toward

 

The pale meadow

 

I mean, away

     from the ditch

 

Break from the musk mallow’s

     prejudice—

 

Knowledge is intricate

                confidence, dishes

 

Nested

         on the lawn

 

Belief is the heart-shaped

 

Blade in the garden—

 

 

~

 

 

Presence is here

 

The point I want to make

 

Traverses the repetition

        of the theme—

 

Your touch was

                 a healing tonic

 

But aggressive—I prefer

 

Shade and mint, eggs, warm oats

 

Blue vervain’s

      dense flowers

 

Force us to remember

 

The blue-violet tone in lovers’ speech—

 

Movement that renews

 

 

~

 

 

I have failed in extending

 

This flow, this cascade

 

A dog’s coiled tongue, blueweed

 

Growing by the highway near

                  the turnoff


Bright yellow fiddlenecks, disturbed

 

I have lied, I have not

 

Been speaking, I have not

 

Been able, I have simply   

          

Talked as if there were

                     a domain

 

One could relate to by some sort

 

Of referential gasp—

 

Impressive

                      buildings

 

Do you love me?

 

Largest hospital in the state

 

The campus stretches

                                          a year

 

It is no use, the past—

 

Make me alive

                  again

 

 

~

 

 

I shouldn’t be surprised

 

Short hours, all the objects

               exact—

 

Styrofoam, coffee, electrodes, rent

 

Sky-blue teeth of chicory petals

 

Divinities in the

            waiting room, pay attention

 

Perhaps be cured

 

Build a flock of wood

      pigeons    

                       

 

~

 

 

Nightingales and frogs, enter the ward

 

Yellow star-thistle, settle invisible disputes

 

Ivory skeleton, deal with internalized hate

 

Neither science nor religion is fitting

 

Love, attractive centaur, follow me now

 

Into Oregon, Washington, California

 

Say again: here, alive

 

Not to designate, but to speak

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




TYPO 29