Today's poem is by Jennifer Martelli

Succulent
       

I want to fill a bay window with sixteen jade plants
in terra cotta pots until they grow thick and knotted as snakes

tangling in the hair of a woman raped by a god
and punished by a woman.

I want to tease rubbery pearl beads of asterids into a rosary string,
finger them, pray on them, try not to let the toxin seep onto my skin.

I want to snap off a fat oozy leaf of the aloe I kept
in the middle of my blue table: rub the silm on my scalded hands—

I want to grow the round black and shiny Phytolacca on a high
shelf, away from Maria, my long-hair cat, hide them

from pregnant women who want to keep their babies
from bleeding out. I always seem to want too much.

I want my succulents to survive me. They can live
for a long time without water, without touch.

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Copyright © 2022 Jennifer Martelli All rights reserved
from The Queen of Queens
Bordighera Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission