Climbing Plants by Jane Fleming

       Danielle Moler CC


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[Climbing Plants]

Paper thin skin
                  And bruises without origin
and sacks for eyes and stomach and breasts.
                                   I’m not tired yet I’m not tired yet I’m not tired yet
says a woman who’s only flowers are words
                 and who wilts below a sunflower quilt
for two hours and two hours and two hours--

Caught on dog hair from a terrier
                 Who licks the quilt because he cannot lick
The soles of your feet
and memories that make you cringe.

You thought you were a moonflower.
                                                  And you remember when you were thin.
                 so white so white so white
that you forget where you began--

where you began in swamp-like heat that pulled
your breath from a chest weakened
                  by pneumonia at six and cicadas chirping like the whirl of bar chatter
late into the night--
and you used to catch spider crickets that jumped too high and made you scream
and made you scream and made you wish you were braver
                 you were braver
than you are now when you threw a plastic picnic table on a colony of wolf spiders--
listening to their shells crack like crabs that you hate
                  but caught in nets on your grandfather’s dock in the summer where
morning glories grew up wooden beams in your grandmother’s garden--

white like magnolias over the old brick church whose
                 leaves crunch like cardboard under Mary-Jane clad feet
and you wonder how now you are crawling out from under
                 live oak roots and calling for those vining plants like morning glories
like honey suckle

like bleeding hearts in the gloaming
                  pink, delicate, and broken by design
                                   you pull so hard that maybe
you can finally climb
                  you can finally climb without fatigue in your arms
in your chest
                  pulling out one haggard breath
to hide beneath a sunflower quilt for
two hours and two hours and two hours--

​

Jane M. Fleming is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry and prose has been previously featured or is forthcoming in Entropy, Drunk Monkeys, Pussy Magic Magazine, Silver Needle Press, and Moonchild Magazine, among others. She blogs at  lunaspeaksblog.wordpress.com and can be found on twitter @queenjaneapx.  

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