I don’t need anyone to buy me flowers anyway by A.N. DeJesus

     ​  lolwho CC


I don’t need anyone to buy me flowers anyway

I am a Heath hen. My body is a bird a man starts trying to save and gets
bored. Pave the way for his next endangered species, teach him the lexicon
of the broken with bitten tongue and bitter breath. Conservation legislation scribed
in pilled sheets I only just washed the sweat out of. Salty amendments soak
pillows through to the feather filling he plucked from me so that he could sleep
more comfortably. The bill passed but was ultimately unenforceable. He was not
a reserve, he was a poacher. Wings rot into the dirt beyond the porch swing, screen
door slam a passing bell. Three tolls, a death knell.

I sleep for awhile. Loam and drowned worms cradle me in the damp as I discover
how to absorb dead, dark things. Learn what it means to eat. Here, I become
perennial.

I am purple loosestrife. My body is a long stalk berried with violet rebel bloom. I unstitch
the mud to tendril deep below, undo the earth with deft roots. I invade, unapologetic
in my spread. Choke the soil and curdle it with greed, leave nothing fertile left for anything
else because I am tired of being told to make room. I refuse hunger, leave turn upwards
towards the sun to take. Selfish tastes like seeds, millions of them dug between teeth
and swallowing. Save the spit for later.

​
​
A.N. DeJesus is a poet and technical writer out of Kansas City, Missouri pursuing an MA in Literary Criticism. She has work featured in The Los Angeles Review and Bear Review; she is a past contributor to Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine.