The Summer After You Die, I Steal a Magnolia

It’s honest spite scraped across damp coquina

that makes me a spade, my lust heavy and fragrant

as iron shears. My only tree blooms in the painting

you parlored for me. I’m awash in unopened

buds, those long undulant clits, pollen-laced,

shameless, murmuring while I curve

the on-ramp leaned into my steering wheel,

gin-tinged in my cloche, a store-bought sampler

of dried Dutch blues. Saw palms vault

their middle fingers while I melt. I forget

to unlock my emergency break. I am fat,

a moon of cream, a bulbous globe unfolding

a sadness so profound I can’t help but stand back

and gawp, hands and mouth filmed with fibrous green.

Trucks knock me around like they own God.

I inhale Spanish moss, blow out columns of sugar ants

and black wasps. Everywhere you touched me,

I am tea-stained, pearl and gold, blazed

with the oil of your fingers. Everywhere you

touched me is the whole of my body. The breeze

holier than dogwood: chlorophyll and cigarettes

and honeysuckle flutes plucked off graves.

I climb. Each branch I clutch is a cardinal with wings

carved from marble, real and suffering as a womb.