Floralia

Allison Cundiff

The crone was once an infant, caseosa-coiled in the rose wet womb.
Age comes for you in your sleep.
             The toothaches, the children’s songs too bright.

Suddenly you don’t mind so much the cottonmouth coiling
red-brown in the reeds. Hourglass like the lady
             you had been before.

The seasons fell like a good skirt from your waist.
You undressed from beauty, sparrowlike,
             before the hideous moult into stooping—

dropping leaves, sogged by a late spring rain.
Lust’s itching has passed. Oh, how you used your long body.
             The many symphonies, the broken strings.

A baby’s ovaries hold all of what will become her granddaughter’s.
She’ll coax each from the womb’s briny darkness.
             Look. The last of life is spread before you.

It’s a banquet. Floralia. Wax tapers and evergreens.
The law is from your mouth now. You are the strong hand.
             Let your spine settle against a good chair.

Smoke the old pipe. The chariots have finished, the horses watered.
It’s the final corner. Be very still.
             Press your ear to the riverbottom.

Allison Cundiff is a beekeeper and teacher living in St. Louis. Her publications include the forthcoming novel Hey Pickpocket (2025, JackLeg Press) three books of poetry, Just to See How It Feels (2018, WordPress), Otherings (2016, Golden Antelope Press), and, In Short, A Memory of the Other on a Good Day, co-authored with Steven Schreiner (2014, Golden Antelope Press). Connect at Allisoncundiff.net

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