By Benjamin Harnett
Everything you think you know about some flowers is wrong, is what this bouquet seems to say, as we feed it to the compost on the fifth day (should I have trimmed the stalks to let fresh water better fill the wilting blooms is something I ask myself, but it’s too late). What are some flowers to the starling picking insects for her hatchlings from between the blooms (the ranunculus, violet to begin with have crumpled, almost black, as if the time has burned them, as if time was a fire—it is ) what should I say to some flowers in their tomb, but I am sorry of my need; that the price of your beauty was that you never go to seed.
Benjamin Harnett is a poet, fiction writer, historian, digital engineer, and union organizer. His work has appeared recently in Poet Lore, Entropy, the Evansville Review, Moon City Review, and at Maudlin House. His short-story “Delivery” was Longform’s Story of the Week; he was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in Poetry; and has been nominated for a Pushcart. He lives in Beacon, NY with his wife Toni and their collection of eccentric pets. He works for The New York Times.
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