If only finches, phoebes, mourning doves could say –
rice exploded in our foundling avian gullets. No, this is a myth. Is arsenic rice not carcinogenic, not a choking hazard, not a harm to birds? Conserve rice at your wedding in light of the famine. Do not throw the rice. Say a prayer, instead. Ask each grain of rice to shed its invisible wings, metamorphose into a fig-eating beetle. Or use shelled sunflower seeds. Say Chryso for gold, anthos for flower. Chrysanthos.
A cyst blossomed as if rogue cells roared freely out of a cavernous nocturne of starving moths: rapacious, not emerald lunas perched atop your summer-screen, over stick-bones dug up in a pear orchard. In beds of goldenrod. Phlox. Digitalis. Columbine. Born mouthless, a luna moth requires no nourishment to elope – analogously, chemotherapy starves the body in an oxymoronic healing. Born without a mouth,
a luna moth
fasts one week to sate desire—
reckless moss of the body.
Image Credits: m-louis
