toxicology // anthology

"you can't hear your heart pumping,
you can only hear the doors closing."


nightshade and hemlock

they had opened a window to the storm.

it rained the day she
stepped foot inside a clearing,
vertigo and photophobia
the portrait of twilight sleep.

solana, there goes the next.

she turned at the sound. looked
all around, at nothing but
green

found nothing but earth and the
roots against her skin

                                  and then

the belladonna singing in her sweet, venom voice—

    blind as a bat, red as a beet,
    hot as a hare, dry as a bone

she scrambled to her feet.

    mad as a hatter, bloated as a toad

impossible, impossible;
she fell to her knees.

    and the heart runs alone

through rime-coated double vision
were her own
crooked fingers reaching for dark dusty berries
imprisoned behind the serrated leaves.

motionless.
stiff.

delirium.






blinded by lurid pride,
they are curiously swathed in
wisteria and ice crystals.
you remember to be afraid.



wolfsbane

she had silver eyes.

she had silver eyes,
and now she was a hunter under the guise of
city wishes stolen away
in glassware and wine bottles.

like a purple-shaded gem
trailing shadows armed with
crescent moon knives,

and her semilunar arrows
paralyzing prey.

he snarled—
 i am a god, remember? my heart pumps petr(ichor)

taking charcoal ended breaths,
they are tangled in a molecular war.
weaknesses yet lay
hidden in her indigo cloak.



foxgloves

a gardener's ailments may include

hypokalemia.
the valley at thirteen is
missing evergreens;
heart poison, low on oxygen
and their blood is running thin.








lily of the valley

the river sapphire

cuts deadly and beautiful.
they open a letter in the language of flowers
a promise, an idea. sender unknown.

the flowering perennial,
sprouting rhizomes, sheds tears
and turns the page.

convallatoxin, she mused. what a lovely choice.

she is a soul who targets the tainted. wipes them clean.
an assassin, they might say.
appearing with the snow, on a gust of wind.

daughter of atlas,
she spins

green tapestry / white cat / grey chi

   you are an audience in reverse to a
black speckled cycle

last night i dreamed
i went to the forest again



daffodils

his name, you hear, is Adonis vernalis.

she loved that narcissistic beautiful boy,
intoxicated in his reflection, drunk on the fragrance of lycorine.

a blooming corona crowns the stones.
they share a secret
buried in a memory, overheard in the laboratory.

in the low marshes, rocky hillsides and montane pastures,
grassland, woods, river banks. rocky crevices, acidic soils.
none of those places.

she never took off her gardening gloves.

she added honey to her tea. turned another page.

a roar echoes in her mind, and she shivers.
burned and burned, into dust and ash.

you remember only six words

   a stethoscope pressed
   against feverish skin

and then a sunset
like amaryllis. jade on the edges. tart like raspberry.

you forget everything you ever read, but
this:

his name comes from the word asphodel
and there he will return.






digitalis revisited

maybe
before the poison,
they were a little
less vicious;

they learned that year that
dandelions
are synonymous with wishes.

i. every one of the melodies is blue
slip on the foxgloves and
dancing shoes,
ribbon-lace the mask
beneath a heliotrope hood

ii. all doorways are not one color but two
so two-thousand seventeen
brought them here
a meadow in shadow
now never green

iii. stay searching for butterflies and vulpine eyes
or cardiac glycosides
growing out of
fractured forests
& rustling florets









bleeding heart

they called her a lyre flower. but she tells no lies.

one night, in a dream,
you find yourself in a clearing.
sunlight and shadows in the same emerald air
lavender lace petals swirling at your feet.

welcome, she says. spreading her hands wide.
the poison has picked you.