covent garden

and the lamplighters come, one by one, putting their

iron nightcaps over the dawdling gaslights, as the morning

peels the stars from its back. weathervanes pointing their

black, accusatory fingers like viewers of a hanging, and the streets

lie in their purple veils, doorways yawning, footfall

in the alleys and the thoroughfares – the shh-ing

and readying that comes backstage before a rising curtain.

 

the flowergirls shuffle out, faces bowed, their basketfuls

of sloop-tongued blossoms, clustered and gossiping like busybodies –

they were gathered in the early morning, bunched and congested

in their meadows like snores, picked by rough hands and serenaded

by labor songs, their heads nodding in the baskets like

prisoners in paddywagons. the dark meridian coronating

the horizon, sneezing in their bushels, they are rudely stolen

from their stems – kidnapped, they fly their

trodden skirts.

 

and now, into the scrubbed london streets, they stick their tongues out

at each other, as the flowergirls haggle. some of the blossoms

still budded and knotted, unfulfilled as promises, they lie

at the bottom of the basket, swooning – maidens in the heat,

with no one to catch their weak and toppling bodies.

the more sensible posies flirt their brown-edged

petals, knowing this may be their

last chance.

 

pressed to noses, strewn in gutters – by mid-morning,

the flowergirls holding their warm coins, having half-emptied their baskets.

and the remaining flowers shivering, wonder

if they're next, oh please,

 

let me be next.

 

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

I loved the duality of meaning in this... and the layers of meaning. As usual, your attention to detail is nothing short of remarkable. "Oh, please/ let me be next"

Like unmarried girls at a wedding.

Very well done, with superb imagery. Once again, you paint the story in splashes of color and draw us in. Just a tiny little slice of life, but so meaningful.

[Emily B]

I shivered a little, too, at the imagery. Wonderfully written.

[Poeticpiers]

A magnificently conceived and well deliver piece of poetic prose/ Conjured up the scene so completely I could almost smell the flowers