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Fourteen-line poem looking a gift orchid in the mouth​​

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Because she is my friend, is supposed to be, because I am 
her friend, am trying to be, I misplace my distaste for this plant, 
its snuffle of air roots, swollen nodes and cap, tendriled lip, throat 
bright-mottled with beauty. From its thick-bladed daïs, it rises. 
The room adapts. Books in their stacks tilt and slip. Whether I rest 
or work, look out the window or away, there is now The Magenta One, 
winged, spotted, mawed, wedged at the edge of vision. And still 
I refuse my skin’s crawl. The sheer curtains know, and the print 
on the wall, the pencils in their cup. The poem knows I will fail 
to meet the demands of this bounty: special pot, bark, moss, rocks,
exactitudes of air, sun, sprays, spikes, powders, soaks. The season 
passes. The pageant shrivels to scraps, the waxy leaves darken. 
And though the stalk bears a ladder of leaves, a blunt new shoot, 
a black smudge appears, then slowly spreads among the coiled roots.

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Erin Redfern's work has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Connecticut River Review, The Shore, The Hopkins Review, and Rattle. She earned her PhD at Northwestern University, where she was a Fellow at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. She has served as poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Festival and as a reader for DMQ Review. She teaches poetry workshops and classes online.

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