roses that sleepshe has named her rosebushes
after her children, grandchildren. mine is a red one, always browning and being re-planted. (I have died as a flower many times.) my mother’s does the best, and never wilts and even when moved, sings against the walls of the house. but outside of the garden my mother is always wilting, always sleeping, blooms tightly shut. she does not move and cannot be moved, she is rooted to a lighter and the television at the foot of her bed. she is a white noise, malboro gold, netflix colored rose. I come to my grandmother’s garden and compost onto my mother’s bush, egg shells, orange rinds, coffee grinds, in hopes that they might reach her wake her, feed her, and new vines will spread out from her feet, strangling her own thorns, stretching out over her bed and behind her dresser, tangling with the wires of the T.V. until they surge themselves out, and then follow the sun through the window by her bed she keeps closed. sing against the walls of her house and break them down. because i want to have something to say about the life my mother lived when i lay a last rose on her tomb. sleeping under soil as her roses still sing against brick, against moon. i will sing to her roses until she sings too. |
give boys flowersGive boys flowers.
Braid them into their hair. Let them sew for themselves floral dresses if they want and make for themselves bouquets to hit baseballs with. Give boys flowers. Fill their baths with them. Let them plant them and pick them and press them between the pages of their journals. Give boys flowers. Teach them how to cull and trim and feed them, how to sing to them. Let them give them as gifts to their boy friends, fill their dump trucks with them. Let them take the petals from the bud and adorn their eyelids with them. Pink rose nectar monsters running around, Clovers tied together as collars and crowns. Give boys flowers. Teach them about sepals, and stamens and pistils, how there are both male and female parts of flowers. And these are just parts, parts that can both be soft and strong and vulnerable beautiful and thorn-eyed and delicate. Give boys flowers and let them make up their minds about the boundaries of their gardens |
green flower heads (for ruth)Broccoli is a flower
which is nice because saying “hey kid, you’ve got some flowers in your teeth” is nicer than saying broccoli or a little bit of green. no, not there, over more. still there. Whenever I was a teenager and told my grandfather I liked a boy, he’d always ask, “Do you like him enough to eat the corn out of his shit?” I never did. But I’d cook flowers with you and then eat them from your teeth and maybe I’d even clean up your shit as you die and wipe the bits of bile from the corners of your mouth, and when it comes from your nose let you use my palm as a tissue. maybe I’d lie next to your body even after you’re dead and weave roses between your rotting fingers. roses and broccoli and corn leaves keep the beetles away from what is left, and when our children ask if i’ll ever remarry say “there’s only one head that pillow will ever fit.” |
Autumn Dupin lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is currently finishing her BFA in visual arts at Loyola University. For a year she worked as a floral assistant in a market that used to be a funeral home. This is her first publication.