Joshua Zeitler
after Ada Limón
Watch Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes: I’m watching--
the curtains having been pulled
for three days & scoop after scoop of
ice cream melted—a time lapse video
from National Geographic, cross-legged in bed, trying not to fling
the laptop burning my bare thighs
out the window, trying not to
shatter the screen I’ve let grow brighter than
a sun in my lap for three days. Trying
to touch them. The flowers, they are gentle
freckled cheekbones. They are lavender blushes. They are pink
lips parting
for leopard spotted tongues they are tiger bright
flanks heaving with breath, only in,
they are deep clean waves bursting sudden sapphire
studded skies.
They are lemon fresh blankets laid
for pollen swaddled babes.
They are aroma & flavor & pop and I want
to scream at them.
Maybe it’s the commanding tone--Watch
Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes--
or the implication
that flowers might not bloom after my eyes,
or the suggestion that this facsimile, with its
too-perfect lighting & isolating absence of
a background, these lives
compressed to a digestible moment
& packed against the black
like sardines in a 3-minute can,
that all of this is the same
or even better than the actual, the real
thing,
real as any thing bound by time can be. Or maybe it’s that I am not
moved
to wash the laundry piled on the floor or bury my hands in the dirt,
I am not moved any further than
People also ask: What triggers flowering?
The answer,
perhaps, is
simple: a need
to reproduce.
& yet it’s so much more complex,
a matter of maturity, of temperature.
Of how long the night.
A flower intuits these things
before it is a flower, trapped by the lens, before
the aperture dreams of opening
—never mind need--
it is encoded in every cell to recoil
at my touch & reach for the light.
& these flowers in the video are not remarkable
for their intuitions, their particular beauties
or desires, but the rhythm to which they have consigned themselves,
like a dancer ordered to bedrest
who elaborately paints
the underskirts of a plain green dress &,
after much hesitation,
kicks their legs in the air, letting it all
spill out over their face,
letting it all spill out, deliberate & defiant & somehow stuck
to the strange particulars of the body. These flowers in the video--
I do not know their names, but I know
they were filmed in Spain, & I know
what they feel in that moment
when the petals stick to the stamen,
& again
when they leap apart, free at last
from the mire of pollen & nectar
& again when they realize
they are open, open,
& again
when the camera has moved to its next subject
& now I need to know
the names of every one, I need to swim across the Atlantic
to shake them by their leafy shoulders—tell them not to open,
not until the camera turns away--
to beg them at length by name & spare them
the cruelty of an efficient gaze.
& so, by some merciful delusion, deliver
every last
sweet nosed clipping
from the cutting room floor,
its sterile square tiles & vicious eyes, its cold promise
of reproduction.
I need to reach them, which is impossible.
So I cry
into my empty ice cream bowl & from my bed I fashion myself another ocean
I cannot swim across.
My wondrous revelation. The best that I can do.
& there is a voice in my head that says
Do nothing.
Give them no reason to look
at you.
the curtains having been pulled
for three days & scoop after scoop of
ice cream melted—a time lapse video
from National Geographic, cross-legged in bed, trying not to fling
the laptop burning my bare thighs
out the window, trying not to
shatter the screen I’ve let grow brighter than
a sun in my lap for three days. Trying
to touch them. The flowers, they are gentle
freckled cheekbones. They are lavender blushes. They are pink
lips parting
for leopard spotted tongues they are tiger bright
flanks heaving with breath, only in,
they are deep clean waves bursting sudden sapphire
studded skies.
They are lemon fresh blankets laid
for pollen swaddled babes.
They are aroma & flavor & pop and I want
to scream at them.
Maybe it’s the commanding tone--Watch
Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes--
or the implication
that flowers might not bloom after my eyes,
or the suggestion that this facsimile, with its
too-perfect lighting & isolating absence of
a background, these lives
compressed to a digestible moment
& packed against the black
like sardines in a 3-minute can,
that all of this is the same
or even better than the actual, the real
thing,
real as any thing bound by time can be. Or maybe it’s that I am not
moved
to wash the laundry piled on the floor or bury my hands in the dirt,
I am not moved any further than
People also ask: What triggers flowering?
The answer,
perhaps, is
simple: a need
to reproduce.
& yet it’s so much more complex,
a matter of maturity, of temperature.
Of how long the night.
A flower intuits these things
before it is a flower, trapped by the lens, before
the aperture dreams of opening
—never mind need--
it is encoded in every cell to recoil
at my touch & reach for the light.
& these flowers in the video are not remarkable
for their intuitions, their particular beauties
or desires, but the rhythm to which they have consigned themselves,
like a dancer ordered to bedrest
who elaborately paints
the underskirts of a plain green dress &,
after much hesitation,
kicks their legs in the air, letting it all
spill out over their face,
letting it all spill out, deliberate & defiant & somehow stuck
to the strange particulars of the body. These flowers in the video--
I do not know their names, but I know
they were filmed in Spain, & I know
what they feel in that moment
when the petals stick to the stamen,
& again
when they leap apart, free at last
from the mire of pollen & nectar
& again when they realize
they are open, open,
& again
when the camera has moved to its next subject
& now I need to know
the names of every one, I need to swim across the Atlantic
to shake them by their leafy shoulders—tell them not to open,
not until the camera turns away--
to beg them at length by name & spare them
the cruelty of an efficient gaze.
& so, by some merciful delusion, deliver
every last
sweet nosed clipping
from the cutting room floor,
its sterile square tiles & vicious eyes, its cold promise
of reproduction.
I need to reach them, which is impossible.
So I cry
into my empty ice cream bowl & from my bed I fashion myself another ocean
I cannot swim across.
My wondrous revelation. The best that I can do.
& there is a voice in my head that says
Do nothing.
Give them no reason to look
at you.
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan, where they were forever scarred by the hellish dobsonfly. They are currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Alma College, have interned at Scoundrel Time, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cutthroat, The Bluebird Word, Do Geese See God, Black Fox, Dark Onus, Transients, and Aquila Review.
