“No One Will Read It Unless You Have Zombies In It”

-panel discussion participant on publishing poems

 

In the dark the roses plot their revenge, their huge heads too much for their fragile necks to support.

In the vase they wilt looking down at the counter where pieces of them fell off. The man who brought them here will pay. They know he sleeps beside his woman who will also pay. They will find a way as only zombies can to slither out and crawl to the bedroom. It’s a lie that they proudly sacrifice themselves for us. We sniff, call it fragrant. It’s their rotting flesh. What kind of creatures ornament a house with corpses?  they wonder. Uprooted, yanked from loved ones, shipped off to be enslaved now here in a place they never imagined (until roses have their own historians, histories of the plucking will favor the plucker). The man’s and woman’s deaths will be attributed to heart attacks. How romantic, to depart this planet together, simultaneously, neighbors will say. But how strange, in the hallway, a trail of red rose petals.