An Offense
       

The famous poet said
to the woman his own age,
Let's hear your pretty flower poems.
I looked at her grave face.
I still see her all these years later, how she stood up.
I wanted anger to leap inside her poems,
for her roses to swarm over a wall and break down the brick.
She didn't read anything at all like that.
Her poem was long.
Very long. Remarkably long.
She buried him, buried him in roses.

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Copyright © 2021 Lee Upton All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission