plant ► noun |
rose of jericho ► noun |
The plant starts off its life by being buried. Though its senseless face quickly burrows up into the fresh air above, it will spend the rest of its existence with one foot in the grave. Not so much like a zombie eternally doubting whether sleepwalking is better than eternal sleep, but more like the snail or the turtle, who sacrifice one part of their lives to darkness so they'll never have to fear death more than boredom. In the summer, the plant opens its innumerable mouths and vomits its sunshine-colored powder onto the bees like an impatient piñata. This is similar to how humans eject the mind's waste products in yearly book publications. The bees fly around excitedly, covering other bees and plants with the powder, like readers sharing quotes amongst themselves. The plant swallows all foreign ingredients and mixes them with its own in the throat. And after months of baking, it vomits again: Seeds like little light bulbs appear, dangling uneasily on the plant's lips. The woodland creatures eat these conclusions raw and shit them out like tender ideas on foreign soils. And the cycle starts afresh: Dust - to dust - to dust.
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The rose of Jericho spends most of its life being dead. It exists in deserts where the sun bakes wood into stone, and where 99% of the water is a mirage. A few weeks after the plant sprouts, daylight scorches it into a ball of hard sticks like an overgrown spider skeleton. It may stay in this form for many years. If a rough wind catches it, the rose will release its hold on its weakened roots and fly away, through sand dunes and western movie backgrounds, until it lands in a rare puddle. And then the rose is resurrected: The sprigs unfold and hold up their seeds and possible unbaked leaves to the brutal, but helpful sky. If it rains, the spoon-shaped seeds might be lucky enough to be torpedoed out of their wombs by a well-placed drop and land in their very own puddle. If not, they stay in their childhood home and take their place as new legs on the mother plant's spider. Eventually, both clouds and puddle evaporate, and the rose of Jericho is again baked into a corpse. The wind takes it, and it rolls on to the next life, which will occur in one, ten, or a hundred years.
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Cecilia Deer lives in Copenhagen, where she works as a reflexologist and massage therapist. She has had five books published in Danish under the name Cecilie Lolk Hjort, but is a newcomer in English poetry. Her previous works include poetry, short prose, book objects, and live writing sessions. She can be found at Twitter.