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Kitty's Orchids Drew Me (John M. Anderson)

like a fly to offal. They smelt, excuse me,

of sweetmeats—of the strong spicy Nasi
Goreng I used to cook, the eagerness of fear

in a first-week seminar, the dead wild
in a flash flood after a long ride of dry
sage and stone. Her orchids splayed. Sprayed

into whatever sky we’d entered—a violent
stillness I love. Her expertise prised each open
and she drank their often-African nectar in,

finding with a thumbnail distinction between
twin strangers. Her garden was the end of a Puccini
tantrum, the music become unconscious, just

a little buzz at the base of the skull. All year
in the desert, this. Pinned on the dust breast
of the dear departed, as if the sarcophagus lid

had been pulled aside a bit and these luscious
wounds had gathered of themselves below the beloved
throat no song more would ever issue forth from, forever.

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