Laura Sackton
Impossible Architecture
All poetry ends in the failure of language, so this is a poem made of flowers.
Stanzas are wily, flammable, quick to scatter. Imagine, rather, a blade of flowers.
Snowdrops soften the edges of winter. Lilacs extravagantly strut. Spring pinks, delights
herself with pageantry: lady slipper camp. Have you ever seen a blockade of flowers?
Make a couplet with zinnias & snapdragons. Call it joy. Call it the thing that beckons
into the bleeding world. Call it luck, or grace, or Wednesday. Call it the first aid of flowers.
A meadow of lupines. A rose that only grows by the sea. Petals, pollen, a blooming
that unblooms into gathered and sweetness, a wildheart born, stitched, & decayed of flowers.
Marsh mallow for the sad blue afternoons of August. Marigolds for salve. Sweet peas for when
talking hurts the most. Morning glories a reminder every day is remade of flowers.
For yarrow. For butterfly weed. With aster and rue. In silence. As lovers. Laura. You’re
breathing. How will you live through this morning, this breaking, this spiraling decade of flowers?
Laura Sackton is a queer poet who lives and writes in rural Massachusetts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, Terrain.org, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. She's known around the internet as an evangelist for earnestness.