The Orphan's Pup
I tell you; in time to come, someone will remember us.
Ice house on a Sunday afternoon.
Once the door shut
there was no door & a place was struck from the map.
A ghost town, and the single, unsettling word, Croatoan,
inscribed on a post
we felt floaty, the field seemed veiled in fog or smoke,
we could smell it, sweet as pumpkin,
pungent as beaver musk & burning corn. Oriental,
Iceland, wood, prickly, pygmy, wind,
tree, desert
bearpaw, tulip, celandine, matilija,
ornamental, California:
opium poppy. The blunt skyscrapers of a stalagmite
parish carved from a panther’s eye.
Garish singing. Chimpanzees with wings & little coats.
I’ll never go back
to that country of poverty; here its gum-
drops & hot air
balloons & no one dies & they pave their roads in gold bars.
Note:
The line “I tell you; in time to come, someone will remember us” is borrowed from Sappho.
Flower Conroy
Flower Conroy’s first chapbook, Escape to Nowhere was selected as first runner up in the Ronald Wardall Poetry Prize and was published by Rain Mountain Press. Her second chapbook, The Awful Suicidal Swans was published by Headmistress Press. She is the winner of Radar Poetry’s first annual Coniston Prize, selected by Mary Biddinger. Her poetry has appeared in American Literary Review, Jai Alia, and other journals.