The Readiness by Alan Gillis

Author:Alan Gillis [Gillis, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Irish poetry
ISBN: 9781943666447
Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
Published: 2021-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

INFLORESCENCE

Even without their fibre optics and shrill beeps

the flowers looked abnormal. Chrysanthemums

loomed huge, gladioli towered like human sized

sex toys of the future, a monstrous polymorphous

hibiscus swamped by whorls of livid orchids

loured in the shape of a wide-belled trombone.

The intravenous feed snaked from my forearm

into something like a sound desk. Similar feeds

were networked from the same console into the stem

of each plant and when the white-coated woman

flicked a switch a webbed mesh of illuminous green

tendrils, calyxes, stamens glowed. My forearm hummed.

‘Now sing something,’ she said. I found it difficult

to get started but the flowers straightened,

ready for performance. I don’t know from what occult

source it sprang but eventually an air beckoned

quietly: ‘I was sick and tired of everything, when I called

you last night from Glasgow.’ The technician frowned

but immediately the belladonna lit up neon hyper-

pink and played a plaintive yet buoyant melody

as if a synth, and soon ‘soup-pah-pah, troop-pah-pah’

from the clematis and enormous madonna lily

rang out in harmony and begonias sang ‘beams are gonna

blind me,’ flickering red, purple, blue and loudly

I felt my corolla open, petals within unfurling light

when the nasturtiums and tulips rose above themselves

for ‘I know its gonna mean so much to-oo-NIGHT’

and the console blew—leaving only darkness, silence,

an overripe stench. She said ‘steady progress’ with tight

lips and wheeled me back to the ward’s dismal fluorescence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.